Contextual advertising enables publishers to display ads on their website based on the content of their pages, creating a non-disruptive content experience for audiences. This technology shows ads relevant to the audience’s interests without the need for audience data. For advertisers, context-driven ads create sharp targeting opportunities to reach out to users who would be interested in their product. This focused reach is the reason advertisers have been increasing their spending on contextual ad units across publishers in all content verticals and at every scale.
But how do contextual ads help publishers drive revenue? Here are the three top advantages of contextual ads over traditional advertising approaches.
Uses your content, not cookies
Generating ad revenues and maintaining compliance with privacy laws at the same time can be challenging. There is a whole new set of technologies and compliance partners that now need to be deployed to manage data collection from users. As publishers grow, the costs from these new layers become unavoidable and considerable. As a result, with tightening privacy regulations, there has been a global shift away from cookie-based targeting. Contextual targeting is a proven alternative to cookie-based targeting and as the internet’s economy evolves, it will become more important to publishers’ revenues. Instead of making adjustments to user journeys, adding new technology partners, expanding your team to manage compliance etc., contextual targeting is a guaranteed way to future-proof ad revenues.
On the other hand, contextual engines are getting smarter with advances in machine learning and AI. This means contextual engines actually read and interpret the content publishers create, interpret the nuances of what this content means and define the areas of interest of a reader, who at any given moment, is consuming this content. Sounds complicated, but simply put, the engines know based on the content, what the user’s intent would be. Based on this calculated interest, the ads delivered are relevant in a non-disruptive way, and avoids many of the pitfalls of using user data to target ads to users.
Diversifies your sources of ad revenue
Advertising remains one of the most important streams of revenue for digital publishers. As advertising budgets for contextual ads go up, budgets from premium advertisers and brands for cookie-based advertising will proportionally go down. On the one hand, deploying a contextual ad on your website will improve your revenue by delivering relevant ads that users actually click, and on the other hand this gets you access to a whole new source of premium advertiser budgets. As market forces drive more dollars to this evolving source, your revenue mix cannot be complete without access to these advertising dollars.
Diversification is a virtue not just in investing, but also for ad revenue if you’re a publisher. Multiple revenue partners, sources, ad types, and placements are tools every publisher should strategically exploit for a revenue strategy that is sustainable in the long term. Since contextual ads are a different kind of ‘demand’ and linked to a different technology, you get a whole new set of ad types, placements, designs and more, to define how your user experiences your content. Your audiences get sharper user experience design, along with more relevant ads, which become a feature of your content and not a hindrance.
Identifies and promotes brand-safe environments
Just like audiences are sensitive about their privacy, advertisers are extremely sensitive about their brands’ associations by being placed in unsafe contexts. Even on a platform as big as YouTube, advertisers pull back budgets when they find their ads displayed next to extremist content. Contextual ads come with built-in safety standards and intelligent contextual engines make sure sensitive content and advertising stay separate. This means advertisers do not pull back advertising dollars as a result of brand-safety misfires.
By providing brand-safe spaces through a contextual approach, publishers act as partners for advertisers and build a long term relationship. This trust draws more budgets as ads perform better over long periods.
Conclusion
As the adoption of contextual advertising grows among publishers, and advertisers increase spending on contextual ads, plugging into a leading source of contextual ads is a must to optimize yields from ad inventories. With a well-thought strategy and a potential partnership with an ad platform that offers and specializes in contextual targeting, publishers can open a whole set of opportunities for sustainable revenue generation.