How contextual targeting providers’ pitch to brand clients and agencies has changed

As such, contextual targeting providers have been twisting, turning and tuning their pitches to the market — ensuring they’re considered among the solutions to those challenges.

A survey of 150 marketers published in January by Proximic (itself a company that offers contextual targeting solutions), suggested contextual targeting was emerging as the first-choice solution to signal loss concerns, with 41% favoring it.

It’s already common for advertisers to plan at least some of their media budget with a contextual provider, according to PMG senior programmatic director Ben Norville. Mostly that’s to ensure they’re reaching audiences that might be missed by audience-first targeting approaches. 

But more advertisers are leaning heavier on their contextual providers for targeting than they were. At performance media agency Roast, for example, mobile and display manager Ryan McAuley told Digiday that some B2B clients now use a contextual approach for 50% of their media spend.

“We are seeing a shift. Even just the word has been thrown around a lot more. I think it will probably continue to move that way,” McAuley said, without naming specific clients.

“In the current climate, [contextual] has probably never been more valuable to us as advertisers,” added Norville.

That adoption has happened gradually, McAuley noted. At full-service agency Croud, associate director of biddable media Natalie Abouk said four clients had begun using contextual targeting solutions from Dstillery, Advanced Contextual. Abouk also didn’t name the clients. The agency remained in a “discovery” phase around the approach, she said, adding: “We’re exploring a lot of partners.”

Pitch in context

Still, contextual adtech providers — companies like GumGum, Peer39, Proximic or Zefr — are working to speed up its use and integration into decision-making. 

Pete Wallace, general manager, EMEA at GumGum, told Digiday that his company’s pitch to the market had shifted in the last year to address signal-loss fears and clients left in the lurch following the closure of former competitor Grapeshot five months ago.

“We’ve adjusted our narrative. We leaned heavily on the messaging around the death of the cookie. Now… the narrative is [that] signal loss… continues to be a massive challenge across the industry,” he said. “We’re still in very, very active conversations across the industry, following the fallout of Oracle [Grapeshot’s parent firm].”

For some providers, AI’s been a focal point of the pitch. Several use generative AI tools to analyze the semantics of a web page more accurately and more quickly. “That’s the hot button,” said Abouk.

Others emphasize performance for brand advertisers over traditional programmatic methods. EXTE, for example, leads with “the accuracy of the targeting” and the ability of its tech solutions to analyze the text and images on a web page, while also emphasizing the brand safety benefits of a contextual approach, said James Hill, EXTE’s chief commercial officer.

“There’s more of an emphasis on general transparency, better controls [among advertisers],” said Mario Diez,  CEO at Peer39.

Adapting to Adalytics

In recent weeks, brand-safety concerns have risen to the top of marketers’ priority lists again following Adalytics’ latest research and the interventions of U.S. senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

DSPs like Amazon and The Trade Desk, as well as verification partners like DoubleVerify, have moved to head off immediate client concerns at the pass; all three companies have made new transparency tools available to clients, including page-level URL reporting.

Contextual providers haven’t been idle, though. 

According to Wallace, the company has focused more keenly on brand safety during its recent conversations with prospective clients. “We definitely saw some inbounds off the back of the most recent news,” he said. Wallace said GumGum had gained over 10 new clients following the Adalytics report; he declined to name any.

GumGum and other contextual providers’ pitch to clients rests on the idea that their approach is inherently less risky for brand advertisers than placing bids for ad placements on the open market.

In basic terms, advertisers bid for ads based on analysis of the text, images or video they’re going to appear alongside – rather than on first- or third-party audience data in an unchecked open marketplace, such as an open ad exchange. They’re still trying to intercept consumers on the web, but indirectly, rather than directly.

Because verification of the ad’s context happens before a bid goes ahead, rather than afterwards, there’s a better chance of catching an issue before an advertiser has inadvertently funded fraudulent or illegal activity; post-bid verification can only catch an issue once it’s occurred.

“The assumption is that you’re in better quality environments,” explained Hill.

Contextual is usually pitched as a solution to signal loss or performance concerns. But the idea that the approach offers clients a greater degree of brand safety was a point raised by providers “even before the last Adalytics piece”, noted Jonathan D’Souza-Rauto, biddable product lead at agency Kepler.

With concerns again at a “peak,” in Wallace’s words, they’re top of the agenda once more. “We’re seeing more agencies kick the tires,” he said.

It’s likely to form part of the company’s pitch for the time being, before it returns to its core arguments around signal loss and targeting quality.

“We definitely will [emphasize it] for a period of time,” Wallace said. “Sometimes this stuff kicks up, and then it dies back down a little bit, and then you get back to business as usual. So, we will react to the market … We are still very much focused on the core route of travel around adding that science to our contextual capabilities.”