Marketing is one of the largest industries worldwide, whether you’re running a small mom-and-pop store or an international mega-corporation. With the advent of the internet and online advertising, the 90s quickly became littered with the launch of semantic contextual advertising. As computer AI became more intelligent over time, the release of behavioral targeting was prominent. However, with privacy concerns today, the return of semantic contextual targeting seems more than likely. It seems inevitable.

A Look-back on Contextual’s Long, Slow Climb Within the Industry

Semantic contextual targeting was first introduced to the internet in the 90s when members of the general public began to sign on and start browsing the internet from home. As AI, or artificial intelligence, was developed and programmed to become more intelligent over time, the beginning of behavioral targeting was introduced.

Behavioral targeting involves following a user’s browsing behavior, patterns, and preferences to generate relevant promotions and advertisements that genuinely resonate with the user’s own wants and needs. With the increase in security breaches, online theft, and data concerns, more advertisers are reverting to the standards of using semantic contextual advertising.

Unfortunately, the rise of privacy concerns has led to numerous data leaks, vulnerabilities, and more control over how user data is collected, stored and used.

What is Contextual Advertising?

Semantic contextual advertising is marketing that involves the use of context clues, so to speak, to determine what a user may be most interested in seeing in terms of ads and promotions. Semantic contextual advertising utilizes surrounding text, videos, images, tags, and other meta information to help generate relevant advertisements to boost a website owner’s CTR or click-through rate.

Benefits of Contextual Advertising

The use of this advertising method provides many benefits over behavioral advertising methods, such as:

five benefits of contextual advertising
  • Affordability: Contextual advertising campaigns are more affordable and budget-friendly
  • Easy: A semantic contextual targeting campaign is easily accessible, even to those with little to no prior online marketing experience
  • Choose and set parameters: Choose the topics and keywords you wish to target on individual pages of your website
  • Fewer constraints and restrictions: Using contextual marketing provides more freedom, flexibility, and control over ad campaigns you launch, as they are not entirely controlled by privacy laws and current legislation.
  • Brand protection: With behavioral targeting and ad campaigns, your website may begin displaying less-than-suitable ads for a family-friendly audience, especially if the user browsing your website has a history of browsing adult-themed content online. While the advertisements displayed for a behavioral campaign are not indicative of your business or brand, they may be interpreted by visitors who are unaware of what behavioral targeting is when they are browsing online. This also allows you to control what types of content are permitted, displayed, and promoted to users online. If you are looking for a way to retain as much control as possible over the available ad space you have on your website, the best way to do so is to use semantic contextual advertising campaigns and solutions.
  • Don’t be creepy: As users become more cognizant of their online browsing patterns and behaviors, they realize just how intrusive behavioral targeting can feel. By choosing to opt out of behavioral targeting in exchange for traditional semantic contextual advertising, you can appeal to those who are tech-savvy and self-aware of the privacy overreaching occurring today. Choose contextual ads to ensure your visitor’s privacy, safety, and comfort. This can also help to increase brand loyalty.

Why is Being Contextual So Essential in 2023?

Creating a successful marketing campaign in 2023 will not always be easy, especially with the competition online and saturation in various industries today. Using contextual advertising can help those who have “ad blindness” from being bombarded due to behavioral targeting attempts. This can also help resonate with your target audience again, rather than appearing as just another corporation to make as much profit as possible.

The use of semantic contextual advertising in 2023 is also essential as it helps companies steer clear of potentially risky behavioral targeting tools and solutions, especially as privacy and data encryption becomes increasingly essential to all users online.

So What Next?

As privacy laws, legislation, and restrictions become increasingly enforced and regulated, more marketers than ever are transitioning back to the classic marketing method with semantic contextual targeting. Whether you are launching a new company or building a marketing strategy for an existing brand, transitioning back to the use of contextual advertising in 2023 can help to give you a jump start on a trend that is sure to expand even more throughout the remainder of the year.

The Return of Contextual Advertising

The return should not be frowned upon but looked towards as an exciting and refreshing time for those familiar with semantic and contextual marketing. For those unfamiliar with semantic contextual advertising, jumping into the process is possible and much more accessible than even familiarizing yourself with behavioral marketing tactics.

Advanced Contextual Solutions

Creating a working contextual marketing campaign requires understanding your target audience, including the demographics you intend to reach. Knowing your audience and specific keywords and topics that are most important to them and relevant to your own business is essential for any advanced contextual targeting campaign.

Professional advanced contextual solutions can help you to better identify your needs in terms of the age range, gender, and even popular locations in which your visitors are before launching your next advertisement online. With professional contextual solutions, create semantic contextual targeted campaigns that provide the CTR and ROI you are looking for with any type of brand or business.

As behavioral targeting begins to take a backseat while privacy laws and regulations are recognized and enforced, the transition back to semantic contextual targeting is imperative. By understanding semantic contextual marketing, how it works, and why it appeals to users online, you can begin developing campaigns that your own target audience is sure to appreciate, ultimately resulting in more sales and revenue.

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Sara Paul
Author

I enjoy supporting ad hoc work at Biz-buzz as a primary research analyst. I usually write about marketing, business, finance, IT, and HR topics on social media, as I am more into marketing and business. As a podcaster and award-winning creative marketer, I still enjoy my pie on my couch, as should all right-thinking people.

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