Improving consumer engagement with contextual advertising

Whether it's the website, app, or social media channels, the main goal for brands is to capture consumer attention. The same strategy holds good for advertising too. Marketers and advertisers want to reap maximum benefits from their ad budgets. However, with the changing consumer landscape and scrutiny over data privacy laws, marketers are looking for innovative ways to garner attention and boost brand visibility. 

Attention has become a precious currency, with netizens exposed to 6,000 - 10,000 ads daily. How can you leverage advanced technology to attract consumers and boost engagement while respecting their privacy? Stay relevant. 

Enter the world of contextual engagement 

Marketers globally have turned to contextual engagement to ace relevance and win the battle for attention. So, what makes contextual advertising a marketer's best bet today to improve how they engage with consumers? By offering the perfect blend of content and context, contextual advertising matches the interests of consumers. 

Powered by AI, contextual ads analyze the text, images, and other elements on the webpage, to establish the content and context of a page, and align it with consumer interests. Unlike traditional advertising that uses consumers' behavioral data to target them, contextual ads are displayed within a user's realm of interest. 

How does contextual engagement enhance the way brands interact with consumers?

Contextual advertising goes above the regular targeted advertising practices, allows a brand to enhance its understanding of consumer interests, and delivers ads on relevant websites targeting the right audience. Contextual engagement is effective, safe, and does not rely on third-party cookies. 

• Relevant - By analyzing the various elements on a webpage, contextual ads ensure only relevant ads are displayed alongside content. This provides a better user experience as the ads align with the user's areas of interest and improve engagement. Users who find the ads more valuable increase click-through and conversion rates.
• Creative -Whether it’s images or video-based ads, contextual advertising offers a wide range of creatives marketers can choose from to enhance user engagement. Since the ads blend with the content on the webpage, they are non-intrusive and rank better among consumers as they do not disrupt the browsing experience.
• Personalized & Engaging - With the ability to go beyond the standard IAB taxonomy, contextual ads give marketers the power to scale audience segmentation to a highly nuanced level. With personalized segments, brands can display ads at a highly granular level, amplifying user engagement and eliminating impression wastage - All of this entirely based on a cookieless targeting strategy. Contextual ads not only lie within a user's domain of interest but speak more directly and personally with them, while being privacy-safe. Thus, consumers are more likely to pay attention and engage with these ads. 
• Trustworthy - Trust goes a long way in brand building and creating a loyal customer base. Contextual ads rate high on brand safety and brand suitability by ensuring ads are displayed in a safe environment that aligns with the brand's ideas and values. With the right messaging, placement, and creatives, brands can build a memorable identity that customers immediately associate themselves with. 

Contextual engagement: Striking the right balance between attention and relevance 

Three key drivers define the success of an ad campaign - content, context, and placement; contextual advertising strikes all these areas, winning customers for life.

If you were researching a particular type of painting - Would an ad about a new Kindle or PlayStation interest you? Or an ad about canvas types and must-have painting tools? 
That's precisely the kind of personalization and relevance contextual engagement has to offer sans any third-party cookies. 

A whole suite of creative in-content placements coupled with the power of context, contextual advertising nails engagement and delivers returns beyond what is possible by behavioral targeting. By increasing its connection with the desired audience, contextual engagement accumulates the highly sought-after currency - attention and has all the correct elements to create a successful advertising strategy for the cookieless future. 

Our recent research in partnership with attention-measurement expert, Lumen gives you deeper insights into the abilities of contextual engagement -

Our 88% ad viewability average was the highest overall, with other formats varying from as low as 47%.
Our ads were also more noticed, with 87% of ads viewed compared to the IAB standard of 61%.
With a 3.2s average viewing time for each ad, our ads ranked in the top 2 in terms of holding attention. 
Our ads get +37% attention on social media channels.
We also take the lead among all other digital channels with the most outstanding attentive score (attentive seconds an ad gets per 1000 impressions delivered) - a whopping 2766 seconds, 3.3x that of IAB standard ad's 837 APM.

Want to know more about contextual engagement and delivering personalization at scale? Talk to us.