Why Marketers Must Bet Big On Contextual Advertising

With paradigm shifts in the digital landscape in the past few years, concerns over identity-driven behavioural advertising & the deprecation of third-party cookies by major web browsers have come to the forefront, leading to marketers' focus back on first-party data & contextual targeting. This is seen as a major turning point for advertisers that are betting big on the future of adtech. 

While contextual advertising may have been looked down post behavioural targeting's arrival, it is gaining ground, yet again, to come back to its running in how brands are projected digitally. As John Battelle, whose seminal book The Search, says, “Marketers have given up on context, and our national discourse is suffering."

Research by IAS, titled 'The Power of Context - India Edition' reveals how consumers in India are extremely receptive to contextually relevant ads. The report suggests that a massive 92% of consumers in India think it’s important for digital ads to appear alongside relevant content. So perhaps, this move to remove cross-site tracking will benefit advertisers and not the other way.

Agreeing that digital advertising is adopting more efficient ways such as contextual advertisements, Himanshu Arora, Co-Founder, Social Panga believes that contextual ads offer great content to the right customer at the right time. He says, "The majority of Indian consumers think it makes an impact if the ads appear alongside relevant content. Not just that, the consumer perception of the ad also improves depending on the surrounding content of the ad and this is the case for all industries, not restricted to any specific one."

It is also worth noticing that the consumers' recall value for a contextual ad is much more vs. a standalone ad, as the connection between the content and ad is much more mapped out.

"With the 'Cookiecalypse' coming soon, digital marketing will have to improvise on data use. More so, third-party data use for tracking and serving ads," advocates Sudarsan Rao, Co-Founder and CEO, Socxo.

When Google announced in 2021 that it will phase out third-party cookies by late 2023, the bells started tolling on the end of cross-site tracking for ad serving. Third-party cookies allow marketers to take user behaviour online and serve ad’s basis that behaviour on other sites.

"And Google isn’t the only one doing this. Apple has already removed them from Safari and requires applications to get user permission before tracking activity. Mozilla's Firefox began blocking them around 2019. Plus there is an emergence of privacy-conscious users, who use other techniques and apps to block this," adds Rao.

With India’s upcoming Data protection bill, for the first time, the personal data protection framework is laid down. Targeting that requires access to user data through cookies etc., need to be identified and marketers must figure out alternate ways and contextual ads allow it to be that alternative.

The better ROI & engagement game

Contextual Advertising has helped in telling more than just the behaviour of the audience. Several reports and studies have backed the effect and inclination of the Indian audience toward contextually relevant ads. "There has been an influx of content in the recent past due to which the brands need to learn more and better about their audience to reach them effectively. The slow elimination of generic data and its cons have given more impetus to the speed at which brands adopt contextual advertising in 2022," witnesses Prashant Deorah, CEO, Puretech Digital.

"Behavioural advertising has more data than Contextual Advertising but the latter gets an upper hand w.r.t. engagement. ROI involves several metrics and attributes which make it tough to comment on this exclusively," adds Deorah.

An ad placed at the 'right place at the right time' will move away from our dependence on third-party cookies. Experts believe that if the context is done correctly, it allows for getting better results through engagement & ROI.

Not just that, contextual advertising has also been seen to build more trust, relevance and recall value. GumGum, a US-based artificial intelligence company came up with a study in 2020 titled 'Cognitextual: A Neuroanalytic Study of Contextual Ad Effectiveness'. It said that contextual gets you about 43% more neural engagement and 2.2 times better ad recall, hence better purchase intent.

Including contextual marketing to up the game

It is essential for marketers to focus on category, relevance and consumer presence before incorporating contextual advertising in their plan. 'Know your customer to own them' is the idea that one needs to delve into. Detailing how one does this is a process and system that marketers will now have to invest time and money to do better. All ad platforms and publishers will now swing towards this model. Display, Search, Native, and Social channels will have to rely on consumer-defined interest areas before selling ads, and the same applies to the ad buyers as well, feel experts.

From defining the audience, creating an engaging format, and optimising content, brands need to ensure that they have the following 3Rs in place -

1. Relevance - The brands have to maintain the factor of being highly relevant - making the most of the moment presented by the environment and user

2. Recency - Contextual Advertising makes use of the latest and fresh content that is available. It algorithmises the messaging accordingly to create an appeal

3. Rigour - The constant push also adds as a success factor for the contextual advertising efforts