5 benefits of advertising contextually
With contextual advertising, your ads are displayed on webpages where the content is a direct match.
It’s not just what you say, it’s where you say it…
The idea that context matters is nothing new.
“Adland’s greatest philosopher”, Jeremy Bullmore, was a highly respected 20th century marketing commentator. Hear his example on the importance of context:
Imagine seeing an advertisement in a newsagent’s window for a governess seeking “occasional evening work”. Imagine then seeing the same advertisement in a respected magazine such as The Lady. It’s a fair assumption that your perceptions of this same advertisement will be strikingly different.
Bullmore’s premise, that where you choose to advertise plays a significant role in determining how people perceive your message, has since been widely accepted.
A cookieless future?
Contextual targeting has seen quite a resurgence of late, having been overshadowed by audience-based targeting for some time. But the demise of 3rd party cookies – over 50% of global web traffic is already cookieless – has meant diminishing data on audience’s browsing behavior, purchasing habits, and interests.
Contextual targeting overcomes this hurdle because it doesn’t rely on cookies or user information. It works by simply matching webpage content with ad content.
You are what you read
There are many advantages to contextual advertising; here we’ll look at 5 of those benefits:
1. Targeted reach.
Contextual targeting lets you target web content with specific and niche keywords – highly useful in science marketing when you want to target gene IDs or branded drug names. And you can capture interests that would never surface with demographic targeting. A social media profile might not reflect that you’re working in neuro-oncology, but you can safely assume somebody reading an article about advances in neurosurgical oncology has an interest in your neuro-oncology research.
2. Increased engagement.
Advertising that is relevant to the content of a page is tailored to the user’s interests and feels more natural and less disruptive to the user’s attention, resulting in higher engagement. A Nielsen and Seedtag survey of 1,800 UK-based consumers studied 4 different targeting approaches: no targeting, interest-based, demographic-based, and contextual. Contextually engaged consumers were 2.5x more interested in the category than when no targeting was employed, and 32% more likely to act as a result of seeing the ad compared to those targeted demographically.
3. Improved memorability.
Research by Integral Ad Science (IAS) used the latest neuroscience and neurometrics to show how context can improve users’ ad recall. According to their study, ads focused on a particular emotion or brand perception when matched with similar content themes were 40% more memorable, compared to when there was no content match.
4. Keeping pace with the user.
Users may have been purchasing lab equipment yesterday, but today they’ve moved on to researching reagents. So, rather than target users based on where they’ve been (as behavioral targeting might), contextual targeting focuses on where they are now.
5. Less waste.
Demographic data can lead to generalizations and wasted impressions on people who have no relevance to your product. With contextual targeting, focusing on the content of the page itself eliminates this kind of waste.
Springer Nature’s targeting approach
Springer Nature’s contextual advertising solution comes with the support of an experienced team of audience specialists, who help you target niche scientific and medical keywords (and exclude negative keywords such as competitor names!).
Your ads appear across Springer Nature websites, including nature.com and link.springer.com, aligning your brand with the world’s leading scientific publisher. And with unrivaled reach – 43 million researchers and health professionals access these sites on average every month – your ads will be exposed to the widest possible scientific and health audiences.
Furthermore, if you decide to layer your advertising strategies as part of a holistic approach, Springer Nature also offers targeting by audience and by journal. Choose from over 100 audience segments – from gene expression to spectrometry – or even build your own custom segment, and find a perfect fit for your ads on any of over 3,000 journals online.
A multi-layered approach, combining contextual targeting with other targeting approaches, optimizes your reach and visibility – strengthening your brand recall amongst the best and brightest in the scientific and healthcare communities.
Contact our team to discuss contextual advertising.
