CANNES – Consumers are gaining more tools to protect their privacy, challenging marketers to find other ways to improve the focus of their advertising campaigns. As tracking cookies and device identifiers lose their effectiveness, the context in which ads appear is regaining value as an indicator of audience characteristics.
“We’re having to rethink targeting. I mean one-to-one targeting as we know it will be a thing of the past,” Sam Bloom, chief executive at Camelot Strategic Marketing & Media, said in this Beet.TV interview with consultant Jon Watts at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, “but contextual advertising for mainly prospecting and those kinds of campaigns is going to be really important.”
To improve the effectiveness of ad targeting based on contextual signals, Bloom sees a need for a supporting framework for programmatic ad transactions. He points to the collaborations among streaming company Roku and retailers such as Walmart and ecommerce software makers such as Shopify as an example of this activity.
“As it relates to tools…first the piping has to go in and we’re starting to see the piping,” Bloom said. “The first piece is just understanding what is going through the pipes, then classifying, codifying it — and then ultimately hopefully making that stuff biddable, targetable and measurable in some way, shape or form.”
Shoppability of Connected TV
As more households connect their televisions to the internet, marketers are gaining greater ability to improve the targeting of advertising on streaming video platforms.
“Connected TV for us is really important,” Bloom said. “Probably the biggest thing for us is thinking about those brands that have a hard time reaching consumers on terrestrial TV or linear TV. Connected TV gives us an opportunity to do some things that are quite smart.”
Geographic data and information about the life stages of consumers are key indicators of what kinds of products and services they’re most likely to buy. The interactivity of connected television (CTV) also offers more opportunities to drive transactions.
“The life-stage piece is among the most interesting because we really weren’t able to really do that in linear with any kind of precision,” Bloom said. “That’s tremendously exciting for our clients.”
