Semantics is the future of digital marketing

In the future, the implementation of personalized ads based on personal data will no longer be as easy as they used to be. One of the main reasons for this will be the difficult identification of users online.

Currently, the Cookies play a key role in identifying users and their behavior. With the introduction of the GDPR regulation and the mandatory consent of users to collect their data, the topic of cookies has become one of the many that brands must keep in mind. Platforms, such as Apple make it even more difficult for users to access data by imposing bans.

Alternative targeting methods, which do not have to identify users, are increasingly entering digital advertising, focusing primary on design targeting.

Contextual targeting is actually nothing new. Initially, the display of ads as part of the content of the site was based only on certain keywords that appear in the text. Modern technology no longer selects ads based on individual words or combinations of them, but instead, evaluates textual content statistically or linguistically. In this way, an environment can be comprehensively profiled and at the time of the first contact with the user, he can be classified. In this case, we are talking about semantic targeting.

What will be some of the options for buying targeted advertising in the future and how brands and media are starting to introduce them from now on.

Ad buying technologies work with targeting providers

One of the key players in this field is Semasio, with whom the programmer platform The Trade Desk has expanded its collaboration this year. Semasio offers cookie-free advertising targeting and, is now used in The Trade Desk technology along with the cookie-based products.

Users are profiled based on the pages they visit. Each visitor has assigned certain attributes, which are then used to target the ad to be broadcast. Semasio uses cookies to create segments of the target group, and the user profiles could be extended about 100 days in the past.

The combination of these two approaches becomes particularly interesting, as brands can thus expand their target group. The display of the ad is based either on the user’s history, if a cookie exists, or on the middle of the page when a contact has made. It is also possible to do both at the same time. As for the interaction of the methods, Semasio speaks of “equal semantic targeting between users and pages”.

In this way, the connection between user data and the targeting environment can be combined in such a way that the dependence on cookies are reduced. The approach is also good for companies that are looking for security for their brand, the so-called brand safe environment. However, through such an analysis, topics can be sifted out, in which brands do not want their ads to appear. The topic is essential, especially for global brands that are constantly investing in improving the quality of the environment, in which their ads are broadcast.

Own decisions by the brands

The German publisher Burda, is also using new technology as part of its preparations for the disappearance of cookies as an identifier. “Sugarless”, is the name of a contextual, content-based solution that must work without the user’s consent. The name was chosen as a hint at the name of the cookies currently in use – sugar-rich cookies.

With Sugarless Burda, they build a system that connects context and content targeting. However, it keeps the “content targeting” as another, separated word in the semantic targeting. The technology database is nurtured daily by new content that appears on Burda’s sites, as well as their inventory items, and is constantly being learnt and upgraded.

Therefore, Sugarless can analyze content, create meaningful contexts, and associate them with advertising messages. For this purpose, the attributes are named and classified into target groups, moods, topics, solutions to problems or desire to buy. Burda supports this data tagging on various platforms and, also integrates it into the editorial workflow.

Access to The Trade Desk and Semasio’s product is fundamentally different from Burda’s. Practice will show in which cases, the open programmatic reservation of semantic targeting is most suitable and when a system aimed at the portfolio of a separate media brand is appropriate.