Content Targeting and Contextual Optimization

Because contexts can also be used for targeting many people who are new in the business assume that is all they can be used for Contexts can also be used to increase an ad39s impact across both targets and nontargetsLet39s distinguish betweenContent Targeting The use of specific vehicles because they reach specific kinds of audiences For example Kraft at ARF in June 2012 reported increasing sales of one brand by 81 simply by buying programs with the highest density indices against TRA Heavy Swing Purchasers HSPs vs just using a sexage targetContext Optimization The use of various tools in order to increase the media impact however defined by placing an ad in a context where there is motivational resonance between the ad and the program andor by selecting contexts predicted to have high attention or gating out contexts which fail to meet certain criteria I will unpack this belowAn example of context optimization is a campaign which ARF reported in 2019 in which one of the world39s biggest spending advertisers increased the unaided awareness of a brand by 62 by avoiding media environments with less than 20 resonance with the ads according to RMT DriverTagsTMBoth content targeting and context optimization can be used together to increase ROI and branding effects Best practices would be to use a combination of content targeting with purchaser targeting and motivational targeting plus context optimizationEsteemed media research colleague Howard Shimmel points out that both these techniques can also be used with ID targeting IDs can be used even with nonaddressable media as OpenAP has proven An underlying theme of this article it turns out is that all the best techniques can and should be used together More on this belowHorst Stipp is one of the foremost industry experts on context optimization having done a threeyear ARF study of the field and a metaanalysis of a halfcentury of research studies on the subject From which he concludes as the ARF has twice sent out in its CMO Briefings that the promise of context optimization is of equal size in terms of sales and branding lifts per dollar to what the industry is receiving from purchaser targetingSo let39s unpack contextual optimization who is doing what where it is going and our recommendationsPaolo Provinciali Vice President Media ampamp Data US at AnheuserBusch InBev in a preconference interview with ANA Senior Vice President Mark Stewart said it allquotBroadly speaking advertising drives consumer behavior through three componentsMessage delivery how we transact in the industry todayMessage reception which is the ability to capture attentionMessage resonance the ability to persuadequotPaolo is telling us that we must do measure and prove all three of these things in order to maximize advertising successFortunately there are people working on all three of those problems I would add the work going on in Brand SafetyBrand Suitability Brand Safety is the code name for avoidance of hate content and so on things that no brand would want to be near Brand Suitability is extensions of that based on individual brand needs ie custom rules on top of the general rules of brand safety By including them we can see that there are four levels where context comes into play Message Delivery Brand SafetySuitability Attention and AdContext ResonancePutting that into a graph and elaborating on it a bitWe can evaluate contexts on four different levels It39s obvious that we should be doing so Most of us are not doing it yet which makes it an industry opportunity It affects forecasts because the comprehensive optimization of context will have strong positive effects on business outcomes and the agencies sellers and enablers offering builtin use of these tools will enjoy record market share growthAt the base level Message Delivery a term Paolo has aptly recoined itself has four levelsValid Human MRC StandardsViewability MRC StandardsOpportunity to SeeHear there is a person there ARF ModelLikelihood to SeeHear LTS a term Tony Jarvis the passionate proponent of this metric has aptly reminded us ofErwin Ephron in his book Media Planning planted the LTS seed and Joe Philport39s vision with Erwin39s help led to the first US use of LTS in the outdoor field the work now carried on by Kym Frank at Geopath TVision is the leader in LTS in television LTS is part of context optimizationMoving up the graph Brand Safety is essentially keyworddriven a way of not having your ad appear on sites or in apps that you can predefine quotSuitabilityquot allows each brand to specify additional objectionable or quotsubjectively offquot keywords by which to blacklist media optionsAt the Attention level Adelaide is the contextual optimization leader In the bidder Adelaide scores likelihood of attention in terms of Attention Units AUs The algorithms were developed by Parsec which sells brands quotseconds of viewingquot based digital inventory Parsec then spun off Adelaide to share the learning with the industry and monetize it Some of the dimensions found to be predictive of attention are number of ads on the page position on page the ad unit and less obvious signals available to the bidder that were found to predict attentionAt the Resonance level RMT is the contextual optimization leader Its empirically derived 265 psychological variables called DriverTagsTM were distilled from every word in the English language by semantic differential factor analysis and settopbox machine learning field trials Nielsen NCS Simmons and 605 have all reported strong uplifts in ad selling and branding effectsbrand adoption by using RMT resonance optimization Clients provide links to their upcoming ads RMT quickly reports the Motivations and Need States in the ads and ranks alternative media environments by their resonance with the ads and predicts lifts associated with one media alternative versus another IDbased audiences are also provided as Motivational Targets keyed to your specific creative executions This is incremental to adcontext optimization it39s adperson resonance I assume that when Paolo says quotresonancequot he is talking about both types of resonance adcontext and adpersonThat39s it the current leaders in the field of context optimization If I39ve missed anyone please let me know so we can amend itHat39s off to the measurers in these fields the people who give contextual optimizers high or low marks for moving real world needles Companies like TVision Realeyes Lumen Media Science and more provide measures of attention which along with other funnel effects are needed to validate predictors of attention such as Adelaide Nielsen NCS 605 Simmons and many other measurers of sales brand adoption and branding effects are essential to proving the effects of resonanceThe real question is Do I need to do all of these things to squeeze every drop out of the orangeThe answer is yes all with the following provisosIt39s more prudent to start there and then eliminate based on in market experimentationOn the face of it solving for any one of these four things does not necessarily solve for any of the rest of themReset Digital whose concept is all adtech together was the first to pledge to use as many tools as the client wants My feeling is that the whole industry is headed that way and many will be optimizing context at all four levels before the end of the yearWe are grateful to get a perspective from Tony Pace President and CEO of the Marketing Accountability Standards Board MASB former ANA Chairman and CMO of Subway quotContextual optimization has always been important even though it is generally less recognized As the world moves to a postcookie landscape finding media opportunities where advertising messages not only belong but perhaps have some linkage rises to even greater importance Messages that fit will not only generate greater attentiveness but importantly have greater engagement which drives not only shortterm action but longterm brand resonancequotClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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