Contexual Advertisng
So contexual marketing has been all the rage in online advertising for the last half decade or so. Whether contexual to you is gator (fine Claria or whatever, 180 solutions (or whatever they are called today) or contextweb, context is king right? WRONG. Now this post is not based on analytical data but on observation but here goes. First off, there are two types of contexual, one is User Theft Contexual (I made this up, feel free to trademark) which is the original gator model of User X is at autotrader so i’ll show a popup for autobytel.com. This is not what I’m talking about in terms of contexual. This post is aimed at the adsense, contextweb type of contexual product, which these days is what people generally refer to in terms of contexual. This is mainly targeting as a result of a hierarchy of categories based on context (keywords/statistical analysis) and there is serious value in this method but I think a lot of us marketers are missing the point. We can sub target a million ways but at the end of the day the most important thing in contexual marketing and marketing in general is HOW THE USER FOUND YOUR AD. I will call this primary context. I will posture that this is more important that any form of analytics. In real life this is akin of seeing an ad for a product vs. a friend who you trust telling you about it. Say for example you’re at an event and the host talks about X, you will naturally think and look into X (you may say you won’t but you will) vs. an ad plastered on a wall somewhere. Primary Context is about how you engaged with the marketing message at the very first touchpoint. This is much deeper than first impressions and is really first interaction. I’d be curious to see analytics where the following scenario is presented: Targeting based on an initial placement which I would use a test a respected site with a loyal audience where the ad reads “recommended by the site” and benchmark it against ads of increasing contexual relevance to the user. I would think the former would be more effective. With that said, I think both together (trust engagement & relevant context) are a slam dunk when used with one another. But if I had to choose one ad to buy I’d go for the ad of greatest primary engagement.
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