By Thomas Ives, Co-Founder of RAAS LAB
It’s a conundrum that has plagued digital advertising for too long – Why have premium publishers never delivered the same level of performance as other channels, even when engagement with their content is so high?
The answer is twofold. Firstly, the ‘walled gardens’ have the advantage of media data en masse, allowing them to precisely target ads with closed-loop measurement and metrics that favour their own platform—namely, cheap reach and frequency.
Publishers on the Open Web, meanwhile, without this scale and despite their high engagement, have been limited in their ability to offer the same level of precise, real-time ad targeting and optimisation. This brings us to the second point—Until recently, premium publishers have not had the technical ability to translate this engagement into meaningful performance for their advertisers.
But, thanks to the AI age, all this is changing.
There are now technologies that enable premium publishers to tap into the missing piece of the performance puzzle—relevance. By focusing on this as the core methodology, Open Web publishers can champion the value of their inventory for engagement and turn it into return on investment (ROI) for their advertisers.
With 42% of global advertisers planning to increase their share of performance marketing this year, it’s time to stop following the tech giants’ rules and start prioritising the power of relevance.
The science of relevance
There is an area of the brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). This area is primarily responsible for acting as a mass filter of information. Considering the huge amount of information that floods through the brain, it would quickly overload the senses if the mind couldn’t decipher what is important and what is not.
It does this by determining relevance, i.e., seeking out information that is most pertinent to the situation and focusing attention on that subject. Effective advertising relies on this connection, activating an individual’s RAS to stimulate a strong emotional resonance.
For example, if a consumer is reading an article titled “Best Holiday Resorts in the Dominican Republic for Families,” a travel brand advertising packages to that destination with creative and family-specific offers would command higher levels of attention next to that article than, say, an advert for a bike.
This makes total sense, but the question then is, why don’t all adverts do this? Why are irrelevant ads often presented to users?
Less effort, more impact
The short answer is that doing this is a gargantuan task, at least for the average human media planner.
Imagine setting up an ad campaign that involves linking 50,000 products to 50,000 targeting lines across one dynamic creative ad server and one demand-side platform, before trafficking a tag for each one across five creative ad formats. It would take in the region of six months for one (poor) indvidual to set up a campaign that delivered relevance and reach. Content must also be continually refreshed across multiple platforms, which adds further complexity.
This is where AI comes into its own. AI is transforming the creative process for personalised advertising, allowing brands to not only step up relevancy to unprecedented levels but also scale, optimise, and automate ad production while improving ROI. Instead of relying on traditional, resource-heavy creative teams to manually design, test, and iterate ads, AI-driven automation enables brands to deliver the right creative to the right audience at the right time.
The technology can understand in which environments consumers are most likely to engage with ad units and identify which type of creative will be most effective. By analysing user behaviour, and understanding semantics, brands, and products, as well as the intent behind the content, AI-driven technology can place well-timed, powerful ads at the impression level.
Not only this, but it can create ad copy and product descriptions and automatically augment images based on performance and granular audience data. Whether it be live product discounts, the weather, or sports scores, tailoring ad content in real-time to heighten relevance and enhance impact. For example, a Spanish person browsing at dinner time a British sports website while in the UK, with this technology, would not see irrelevant, English-language ads but campaigns that advertise food with sports slogans and in Spanish.
Power to the premiums
Gone are the days when delivering irrelevant ads to users around the internet was deemed to be an effective approach. Audiences are more sophisticated, and so is technology. People demand and expect intuitive, quality experiences, and their RAS will instinctively alert them to the most relevant and affecting ads.
Premium content publishers can now compete with other channels, dynamically optimising media placement and creative messaging simultaneously. This means they can capitalise on their highly engaged audiences without compromising user experience, finally delivering true ROI.
Relevance is the new methodology, and more effective advertising is the outcome. The partnership of the two is a revolution for premium media owners.
