Advertising pixels had a good run. While the run isn’t over, it’s certainly slowed down in a world where web users can opt out of re-targeting.
Considering all the work cookies did on behalf of marketers, an old-school approach is needed to recapture the data lost whenever someone opts out on their browser. Although contextual targeting for web marketers offers a realm of new possibilities in the age of AI, it’s rooted in durable marketing philosophies that deserve a second look in 2025.
What is contextual targeting?
Contextual targeting is an advertising technique in which ads are placed based on the content of a particular web page. A blog post about fashion trends gets an ad for a retail clothier; an article about the Super Bowl gets an ad for NFL tickets; etc. The concept is intuitive, but the key to ensuring ROI is to identify the correct content categories and keywords that target audiences effectively.
That’s easier said than done. Effective contextual targeting requires a sophisticated profile (a persona) of the user, respecting their online privacy while still delivering relevant advertisements. AI can help but, as always, its outputs are only as good as the inputs. Understanding the online behavior of potential customers requires a baseline level of human insights.
Identifying personas as a proxy for real customer groups has always been a cornerstone of advertising. Think about the early days of television when soap operas (which advertised household products, like the name implies) and sporting events (which traditionally advertise beer, cars, and other things men traditionally bought) segmented the population into crude, gender-based groups. Contextual targeting on radio, newspapers, magazines, and billboards even predates television.
Although many limits exist on the “context” available to advertisers, the internet is rich with more actionable data than was historically available on television or in print. By using the available context clues (i.e., images and words) on each web page an ad might live on, advertisers can use algorithms, machine learning, and AI to develop a more well-informed match between content categories, keywords, and personas.
Dynamic creatives, which automatically change the content of an ad based on a user’s behavior on the website, changed the game. They effectively concede that a sophisticated algorithm can tailor an ad to human consumers better than human advertisers. Yet even where available, dynamic creatives still require human inputs – engaging creative elements, a broad range of image and text combinations, as well as knowledge of the target persona.
Once a campaign is running, its performance serves as data that effectively offers feedback on the accuracy of each persona. Over time, today’s digital tools will allow marketers to create more personalized ad campaigns and more accurately measure the impact of their efforts.
The richest source of data for any personas your company might develop is your website. Visitors can be targeted for ads based specifically on what video/links they click on when visiting your site. Those who sign up to receive emails about specific products can be targeted for ads around similar products. Anyone who volunteers their geographic location can be targeted based on their region.
All of these strategies demand a little more homework on the user than cookies, but the rewards for that effort are still greater than ever. A user’s actions on your website can help align the data that informs personas with the known behavior of real people — which in turn can yield more effective contextual targeting. The key is getting the user to your website.
The renewed importance of contextual targeting puts advertisers in an old, familiar place: the goal should be to grab more data on a customer through more ways — paid ads, follow-up emails, more customized approaches to the prospects and customers — that move your leads down the sales funnel. All of these methods are still relevant in 2025, and allow brands to amplify the power of contextual targeting.
Andrea Ness provides leadership and oversight to ddm’s media team. With more than 22 years of experience in marketing and public relations, she has driven significant growth in building strong media, social, and digital teams for marketing agencies and organizations. Andrea enjoys building valuable relationships with people at all levels of an organization and using her skillset to advance both people and companies to the next level.
