Contextual targeting, even though it’s far from being a brand new advertising strategy, can gain much more attention in the coming months and become a vital part of marketing campaigns. And that’s all thanks to the future deprecation of 3rd-party cookies, which is just around the corner. But what is contextual targeting, and how can you use it to the benefit of your franchise business?
The basics of contextual targeting
It’s best to start by learning more about the definition of contextual targeting. In short, it’s a type of targeted advertising that displays ads for products and services that are based on the contents of the website. How does that look in real life? For example, if a person reads a blog article that talks about gut health, it sends a signal that this particular user may be interested in supplements, high quality food, or even the services of a dietician. And the user will be shown ads for these kinds of products and services. Contextual targeting works by interpreting a number of signals of each website, including URL address, texts and images as well as content category. This way, it can learn more about the contextual relevance of each page and select suitable ads.
Behavioral vs contextual targeting
Even though contextual and behavioral targeting may seem similar at first glance, there are some critical differences between them. The main contrast is the fact that behavioral targeting focuses on the past behaviors of the users and uses that knowledge to create their profiles and personalize the advertising content. Meanwhile, contextual targeting completely disregards the past and looks only at the website the user is presently on.
How can you use contextual targeting at your company?
Contextual targeting allows you to match highly personalized advertising messages to the users without having any of their previous online histories. As a result, you can also efficiently work on the optimization of advertising budgets focused on building brand reach, especially when it comes to the top levels of the funnel.
Why will contextual targeting matter more in the future?
We already mentioned that contextual targeting could become even more meaningful in advertising efforts in the future. But why will that happen? Because contrary to various other types of advertising, this method of targeting doesn’t require access to third-party cookies. In 2023 third-party tracking cookies won’t be supported anymore by the vast majority of the market. Google and its browser Google Chrome are the last ones to stop the use of cookies in 2024, following in the footsteps of other browsers, such as Firefox, Edge, and Safari. This part is vital as Google alone has over 60% of the shares of the browser market. It’s easy to see that in the post-cookie era, all the solutions that don’t require cookies will become much more widespread and used even by the companies that haven’t tried them up to this point. That definitely includes contextual targeting