Growing Privacy Concerns
Contextual targeting owes it’s return to center stage to the growing privacy movement these days. The European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR); California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CPPA); Pending legislation in states and countries worldwide; Google Chrome and Apple Safari browsers have instituted tighter control of third-party cookies and beefed up ad blocking options; Facebook has stopped third-party cookie ads.
This has put privacy at front and center, and opened the door to other solutions. Contextual advertising and in-context videos are GDPR compliant since they don’t rely on personally identifiable information from users but focus rather on semantic data. Content analysis and keyword matching are solutions that work and do not target individual users. They simply don’t violate privacy rules.
Ads that are relevant to the content being consumed are more likely to be of interest. If you’re reading a review of a particular software, you’ll probably be interested in an offer for that software. This contextual placement works regardless of your online profile used for tracking.
How Tech Enables Contextual Content
Good editors know a lot about their content, great editors also know a lot about their audience. They can match a few recommended videos to an article to increase relevance. This is a viable method for small sites with only a few articles and videos. Larger sites, ones with an abundance of content (text and video), should harness tech and automation tools available today. By scanning articles and leveraging layers of data metrics, automation can serve relevant videos to enhance and extend the user experience.
Sites can be analyzed for words and images, then cross-referenced against video content using algorithms to place relevant videos on the page. On top of that, machine learning understands users and content to serve up the most relevant (and engaging) videos. In the background, automatic optimization is constantly testing and monitoring the performance of the contextual placements, ensuring that the best performing videos are served against content for maximum value.
Breaking Through The Clutter
Today, with the vast amounts of content offered online, editorial content must strive to stand out and be highly relevant to each consumer. It makes sense. If you’re interested in a particular piece of content, you’re just more likely to engage with additional relevant content.
Contextual content breaks through this clutter, and video is even more successful - visitors pay more attention to video than any other form of content. 62% of users say they consume videos thoroughly and visitors spend 2.6 more time on websites with video. When videos are placed in context of the content on the page, engagement rises significantly. It becomes an extension of the content instead of an intrusion.
It’s All About Relevancy
We love the idea of contextual advertising, we invite advertisers to utilize contextual advertising on our platform. At the same time, we emphasize the importance of contextual content targeting and the value and impact of relevancy. It makes for a better user experience and can help shape editorial decisions.
Context is all about relevancy. It delivers the right content to the right person at the right time. This improves engagement and enhances the user experience.
