A Look At Contextual Targeting In OTT

While OTT offers sophisticated audience targeting and measurement, digital media buyers use these capabilities.

Fremont, CA: Advertising has generally matched its messaging to particular programs on television, the largest brand-building medium in history. The advantages of one-to-one targeting based on audience traits have made contextual TV advertising less valuable as digital has expanded across display, search, social, and video.

The mindset of targeting, accuracy, and waste reduction performance has got influenced by these characteristics, ranging from demographics to geographics, attitudes, and habits.

This kind of thinking underlies the widespread perception in the digital advertising sector that context shouldn't matter because program-based buying is obsolete in the age of precise audience targeting. Instead, it gets believed that programs are merely purchased as a stand-in for reaching a particular audience and that this strategy is inefficient given the availability of more effective ways to target specific persons.

It fails to consider that brand formation is the result of emotional connection, which develops over longer time periods than most attribution windows allow. While TV advertising has a wide audience, tales that may get presented in sight, sound, and motion offer an extraordinarily potent means of evoking strong emotional responses. Due to this, context is important.

While OTT offers sophisticated audience targeting and measurement, digital media buyers use these capabilities. As advertising revenues follow the consumption trends from linear television into streaming, so do the expectations surrounding contextual placement.

Choosing streaming applications and differentiating professionally produced films and television from less expensive digital material that can be less brand-safe and obtained via aggregators is the simpler first step for consumers. Buyers can also opt to employ content ratings and genres. Still, since ratings change over time and around two-thirds of entertainment viewing falls into three main categories, these methods are typically too basic for picking surroundings (action, comedy and drama).

Therefore, the urge for program-level purchasing and transparency emerges and is soon met with practical and legal challenges. With streaming, viewers can access thousands of different program alternatives at any given time, and titles may be merchandised in various ways. Due to limited resources, it is impossible and unhelpful for buyers to search through hundreds of titles before purchasing or filing a report.

In addition to providing advertisers with previously unheard-of insights into the effectiveness of their communications efforts, bridging the gap between content, context, and the audience will also better serve every community, moment, and mood as we define the next chapter for contextual advertising in OTT.