Contextual targeting has been around since before the early days of the Internet but declined in popularity as marketers turned to audience-based advertising for personalized and highly-targeted campaigns, and of course, retargeting. Today, thanks to increasing regulation on data privacy, including GDPR, Apple’s cookie blocking, and brand safety concerns, contextual targeting is experiencing a rebirth. Its future is promising, with new technologies improving its capabilities and more advertisers embracing it as a strategy. But even as it continues to pick up speed, it’s important for marketers to understand why, when and how to utilize contextual targeting for advertising efforts. While contextual targeting has always played a big role for decision makers, its value decreased in recent years as buyers turned their focus to personalized, audience-based ad targeting, which allowed for retargeting and measuring performance via last-click/last view attribution models. But with uncertainty surrounding the impact of GDPR and how strictly it will be enforced, many ad buyers are hedging against the high risk. Suddenly, contextual targeting, where individuals are targeted by ads based on the content they’re viewing, is more appealing to agencies. But the overall success of contextual will be heavily dependent on a better market understanding on how to measure lift. In an age wracked with brand safety and data scandals, getting the right message to the right audience at the right time without being invasive is key for everyone.
