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Audiences & Targeting
3 min read
Contextual targeting places ads based on the content someone is viewing right now — the article, video or page — rather than on who they are or what they have done before. As privacy tightens and cookies fade, this old idea has become new again.
Analyse the content. The page or video is scanned for topic and tone.
Match to the ad. Ads relevant to that context are chosen.
Serve in the moment. The ad appears alongside fitting content.
No profile required. Targeting rests on the page, not the person.
Topic. The subject of the page or video.
Keywords. Terms that signal relevance.
Sentiment. The tone, to avoid unfit adjacency.
Format. The medium the content lives in.
Privacy-friendly. It needs no personal profile or cookie.
Moment relevance. It reaches people while the topic is top of mind.
Brand safety. It keeps ads beside fitting content.
No individual intent. It targets the page, not the person’s history.
Nuance and mistakes. Machines can misread tone or meaning.
Scale of judgement. Fine-grained context takes good classification.
Less personal. It cannot tailor to an individual’s past.
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