Why Advertisers Like Contextual Targeting
In this clip from the Ad Counsel: Delivering Streaming Ads That Convert session that kicked off the latest Streaming Media Connect, TVREV Co-Founder/Lead Analyst Alan Wolk and an all-star panel explore the evolving landscape of contextual advertising, particularly in the context of news and video content.
Not All News Is Negative
Wolk highlights the shift from traditional concerns about ad placement next to sensitive news content to a more nuanced understanding that not all news is negative.
“People say that a lot of times, advertisers were afraid to buy on news shows" because of the risk of running ads that might seem tone-deaf or disrespectful in the context of tragic news reports. "There's that classic [scenario] where they're bombing Kyiv and there are air raid sirens going off, and then there's this funny Applebee's commercial running next to it. But they found, with contextual, that most news programming is not doom and gloom. There's a lot of 'twelve things to bring on your next beach vacation' or 'woman celebrates, 105th birthday at nursing home' kind of stuff."
Contextual Advertising and Sentiment Matching
Wolk suggests that with Vevo’s music-centric programming, advertisers might object to having their ads run against particular music genres, and poses the question to Vevo SVP Global Marketing and Research Julie Triolo, “Is contextual a way to say, ‘Hey, this is nothing to be afraid of?’”
“100 percent,” says Triolo, elaborating on Vevo’s proprietary capabilities in contextual targeting, and emphasizing the use of metadata to align ad sentiment with video content, ensuring a seamless viewing experience.
"We've spent a lot of time on proprietary capabilities in the contextual space, and like you, Alan, I've always known it to be sort of the antithesis of what we were wrestling with with cookie deprecation and GDPR and CCPA and all of these things. And so we're taking a left turn and looking at really building out matching the advertising to the context and ensuring that audiences that are watching these particular videos are matching with what is expected from an advertising standpoint. We've used a lot of metadata to signal sentiment. So we will categorize videos in the sense that they're 'Joyful' or 'Heartfelt,' which is like Mother's Day or Valentine's Day. We'll do 'Empowering.' We'll have all of these different categories where each video is tagged with metadata so that it matches what the advertiser sentiment is looking for in that particular context."
Describing other efforts at Vevo to enhance the contextualization of ad creative with appropriate content, Triolo says, “We also have things like Vevo Rewind. We do a whole taxonomy of advertiser creative to match the site, sound, and motion of their creative so that it's a seamless viewing experience so that it matches the videos plus the ads. So the contextual piece has been very much a hot button as well. And I feel like with your news example, I did come from Warner Bros. Discovery, and so the brand suitability piece was really big in ensuring that we had those sentiment tools to bring advertisers into the place that they wanted to be in. That news context was really important as well."
Brand Safety and Relevance
Erin Firneno, SVP Business Intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions, notes that “advertisers are very enthusiastic about contextual targeting” as it offers brand safety and relevance, reminiscent of linear TV.
"You hear about the dating app that shows up in a serial killer documentary--not great,” Firneno says. “Advertisers are very brand safety-focused, and they feel that contextual targeting can help address those concerns."
Where Is the ROI?
Christina Chung, VP Business Operations at Estrella MediaCo, raises concerns about the current focus and investment in contextual targeting by tech partners. “As a publisher, we work with a lot of different ad servers, and there's not many of them that are very focused on contextual targeting,” Chung says. “And as a publisher who wants to do more contextual targeting. I know that's the future. But I am also very curious about the ROI. Are people meeting the clients, the advertisers, agencies actually investing dollars in contextual targeting today? Because I find that a lot of our tech teams and our tech partners are not really as focused on contextual targeting at the moment."
Triolo affirms that at Vevo she’s witnessed a growing interest and potential high CPMs in this area. “I think there's a huge boom, and in fact, there's an article that was just released from Streaming Media about FAST channel contextual targeting and the CPMs that can be garnered through that.," Triolo says. "So I think there's a lot of spotlight on it and it's very much a hot topic."
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