Bringing Your Contextual Targeting Up to Date

July 11, 2023

srose@triplelift.com

Continuing with third-party cookies and Universal IDs is a game of diminishing returns. Now is the time to elevate your contextual strategy by supplementing it with behavioral capabilities. We’ll show you how.

The Problem: You’ve Been Overlooking Contextual Targeting

When third-party cookies are fully deprecated, 90% of traffic will be expected to lack a cross-domain identifier. That’s almost 100%. If you’re one of the 80% of advertisers relying on third-party cookies, reaching your audience is going to be tough. But you don’t have to say goodbye to addressability when you say your final, final goodbyes to cookies.

Modern contextual targeting has entered the chat.

The Promise: Contextual Targeting is More Capable Than Ever

Taking a second look at contextual is like finally updating your operating system and enjoying all the new functionalities you never knew you needed. It’s not just keyword analytics anymore, especially if you layer behavioral data on top.

“Contextual targeting has had a glow-up, and I’m here for it. New technology at TripleLift (powered by 1plusX) allows for deeper analysis not only about the topics and content of websites but also how users’ interactions inform future recommended content. It’s time for a media planning makeover.”
– Charlotte Schaefer, Associate Director of Product Marketing, TripleLift

The Opportunity: There’s Room for Improvement

Traditional contextual advertising assumes that any person reading content relevant to the advertised product or service will be interested in the product or service. But not every NBA fan is looking for new kicks to hoop in. Some of us are just happy to sit on the couch and watch the pros. And that means lots of ad dollars go to wasted impressions. Therein lies a big opportunity to improve the quality of audience segments, resulting in more efficient targeting.

Let’s explore how to make the most of this opportunity.

The Solution: Improving Your Contextual Targeting Strategy

Updating your contextual targeting strategy for the modern era doesn’t have to be a daunting task if you have the right insights. We’re here to introduce you to a side of contextual targeting you’ve never seen before.

These days, you can leverage audience segments based on specific pieces of content readers consume, making first-party data even more actionable and allowing you to more effectively target your ad spend without third-party cookies. This new and improved contextual targeting helps shoe brands, for example, avoid wasting precious ad spend on basketball fans with no interest in actually hitting the hardwood.

With modern contextual targeting, there are so many new layers that will supplement your keywords analysis strategy, including:

User Intent
Sentiment Analysis
On-Page Engagement (i.e. clicks, scroll depth, etc.)
Historical Performance Data

We’ve got highly efficient targeting covered, but we know what you’re thinking: what about scale? When it comes to contextual, the word of the day is deals, specifically, multi-publisher deals. So why not reach out to see if you’re a good fit for our publisher first-party data alpha program?

The Takeaway: Context(ual) Is Key

Contextual targeting, with its new and improved capabilities powered by behavioral data, is an essential tool in your cookieless survival kit. But you don’t have to wait until we’re living in a digital world totally devoid of third-party cookies to start thinking about how to incorporate contextual targeting into your strategy. You can and should start now.

Want more information on contextual targeting? Check out our updated Prepper Playbook. And don’t forget to check out our previous post to learn how to make first-party data your MVP.