10 Tips For An Effective Contextual Targeting in Advertising
Daniel Martin
Advertising is not just about putting out ads to promote your products and services. It’s also about showing these ads to the right people at the right time. Marketing is quickly evolving and so is advertising. Now, digital advertising is the way to do it – putting out advertisements on different platforms and reaching out to your target market.
That is where most marketers struggle with. However, there is a technique that will help marketers achieve their advertising goals – contextual targeting.
What is Contextual Targeting?
Contextual targeting or contextual advertising is a form of advertising appearing on websites and other media platforms. The advertisements are of relevance to the page’s content. One of the popular examples is Google AdSense.
How does it work?
Google’s robots will scan keywords on your website and automatically serve ads that are relevant to your users.
Contextual advertising has been around for a little while now yet most companies that maintain a brand presence on the web are aware of its great potential. One of the brands that have taken advantage of this form of advertising is the well-known cookie company – Oreo.
During the 2013 Super Bowl, everyone that watched it (whether at home or in the stadium live) saw the stadium lose power and everything turned pitch black. Oreo saw this opportunity and created this ad.
Oreo quickly launched a paid ad on Twitter that said: “You can still dunk in the dark.” The post has garnered traction. With this, the company has greatly improved on its already phenomenal brand awareness.
Contextual advertising offers a huge deal of exposure to savvy marketers who are experts in knowing how to find a niche. But we have the tips on how to avoid the common mistakes beginners make and still create an effective ad that would generate more leads for the business.
Tips for Contextual Targeting in Advertising
1. Divide campaigns
Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Create separate ad groups for your contextual ads. Do not use the same ad groups for your search ads. Aside from search ads are more expensive, this also allows for a wider reach given that you have several ad groups targeted.
2. Analyze your target audience for relevance in contextual targeting
When it comes to advertising, it is important that your ads reach the right target audience. Or else, it would be a waste of time and company resources. Blogger outreach involves sites reach out to their target audience in their niche with backlinks inserted that boosts traffic to their own websites.
Analyze your target audience by conducting a thorough study of their internet usage habits. Provided with that data, you can then strategize your ads to run on time slots where the internet usage among your target audience is at its peak.
Another, you can also deliver targeted messages and offers that are properly timed. This way, it can substantially grow your brand’s image and increase overall conversions.
3. Group together keywords that are not frequently used to be contextually accurate
Try out the long tail marketing approach. Basically, it is the process of grouping together keywords that are not frequently used to capture neglected segments of the market. In totality, these segments represent a vast sector.
If managed successfully it will result in outstanding brand exposure. Try to target keywords that are not being frequently used by your competitors. When it comes to obtaining late-cycle and mature leads, long-tail marketing will be of very much help.
Pay-per-click (PPC) ad is an advertising method wherein an advertiser pays the publisher for every click of an ad. As easy as it may sound, many vie for this type of advertisement.
Marketers place bids on the placements of their ads – the higher the bid, priority of placement on the website. Then, focus on attention-grabbing pay-per-click ads.
5. Include cost-per-mille ads in contextual targeting
Cost-per-mille ad is a technique that is useful when you want to advertise a website, a specific webpage, or a company blog. The advertiser pays for every thousand impressions of the ad on the network.
Since it is much cheaper than pay-per-click, it’s often the preferred method by marketers. Also, it is a great way to develop brand awareness on a larger scale as it generates visibility on your products and services.
Use the different multimedia to your advantage. Take time to study your competitors. Look at their contextual ads. Scour their websites, social media accounts, brands that they have partnered with, or print ads that they have published. Examine their customers’ testimonials and reviews too.
Try to find a way to make your campaigns stronger in terms of keywords selection and creative banner designs using different tools. Remember, there are a lot of contextual ads out there from your competitors, you need to stand out from the rest of them.
7. Broaden your list of keywords based on thematic terms
When it comes to creating a list of keywords for your ads, create a broad list of keywords as much as possible. Create a thematic list instead of just using synonyms of the keywords.
A thematic list will likely get you to pages of the entire field, which helps you get a hold of a wider customer reach.
For example, if you are targeting the keyword bag, don’t just include its synonym keywords such as handbag or purse. Include thematic terms like an accessory or fashion.
8. Include facts, inviting call-to-action, positive customer feedback
One of the goals of campaigns is to spread facts about the products and services. Your campaigns should be convincing enough but not in a way that is too good to be true.
Include irresistible call-to-action and positive customers’ feedback, these make your ads believable and more compelling.
9. Exclude worst performing websites for campaign
In contextual advertising, you need to meticulously track your responses and CTR. This way, you will that some websites will boost your conversion rates while others will just be a waste of advertising resources with pointless clicks.
Here’s what you are going to do – exclude the worst-performing sites from your campaign instead of running up large negative keywords. It lets you focus more on sites that can boost your conversion more and fast and create targeted and personalized ads for these sites. Use it to your advantage.
10. Retargeting or displaying again products
Contextual ads are not just for new products and services. Once products and services are purchased or availed, you are done!
Retargeting or displaying ads for products and services that were not purchased or availed yet is an effective way to entice customers to return to your site and purchase it.
It also convinces customers to purchase whatever products they have left on their shopping carts, pretty clever, right? Also, highlight some discounts and sale offers.
Final words
Putting up an ad takes up the company’s resources. There should be a return for every ad posted, because if there’s not then what’s the point. Good thing, we have these pointers in creating effective contextual advertising.
Daniel Martin
Daniel Martin loves building winning content teams. Over the past few years, he has built high-performance teams that had produced engaging content enjoyed by millions of users. After working in the Aviation industry for eight years, today, Dani applies his international team-building experience in Link Doctor LLC Link Doctor LLC in solving his client’s problems. Dani also enjoys photography and playing the carrom board.
Daniel Martin 
