When it comes to audience targeting, how you target is equally as important as who you target. Once you’ve found your target audience, it’s time to put that data to good use. One option is contextual targeting.
According to Search Engine Land:
Although [behavioral targeting] has led to noted improvements in ad effectiveness for national campaigns, we posit that locally-targeted ad campaigns with strict geographic limits do not see as much of a benefit as from other targeting techniques, such as page-level semantic analysis, or contextual targeting.
Contextual targeting allows for ads and content to be displayed within a site or digital experience based on the context of the page. The page is crawled for keywords. Then, the magic that runs the Internet (some super powerful targeting algorithms) select and serve a relevant ad. For example, while shopping for a tropical vacation, the customer may see an ad for a bikini shop. The bikini advertiser has likely purchased contextual ad placements based on specific keywords that would display in the related page — “beach,” “vacation,” “oceanview.”
If you regularly read new and blog publications online, you’ll often notice recommendations and related content somewhere within the page. This type of content is also delivered through contextual targeting. The algorithms that drive these recommendations using similar keywords, categories and tags to make recommendations based on the content you’ve just read. Tools like Outbrain or Tabloo can help your brand to appear in recommended content — giving your brand a relevant connection to the content within the page.
Because of their relevance within the content of the page, ads delivered with contextual targeting are considered more appealing and engaging for potential customers than other ad placements. Often, contextual ads will achieve higher click-through rates simply because the user is already interested in the content they display. This added relevance and boosted engagement makes contextual targeting a go-to strategy for many advertisers.
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