Contextual Commerce Media vs. Programmatic Advertising
For CPG brands looking to drive awareness and results, there are a variety of advertising types that can be incorporated into one’s media strategy. As advertisers increasingly aim to drive measurable commerce outcomes, two of the most pertinent strategies today are contextual commerce media and programmatic advertising.
Here, we dive into these two types of advertising, their key differences, and why contextual commerce media might be the best choice for driving incrementality and media efficiency for CPG brands.
What is Contextual Commerce Media?
Contextual commerce media is an offshoot of commerce media that enables more engaging experiences by leveraging contextual relevant content to reach consumers in the right mindset, thereby driving better outcomes.
Contextual commerce media seeks to reach the right audience, at the right time, with the right mindset.
It serves as an alternative to programmatic media’s strategy of reaching as many people as possible (oftentimes to the detriment of the consumer), and complement to retail media networks (RMNs) who have first-party data, but access to a pool of primarily later-stage, on-site customers. This allows brands to tap into off-site channels to reach high-intent audiences, or even new and lapsed consumers.
What is Programmatic Advertising?
Programmatic advertising is the use of automated technology for buying ad space - it is an alternative to traditional methods of digital advertising, and has been a go-to tool for advertisers looking to gain maximum impressions. In the face of growing disdain and privacy concerns from consumers, however, agencies and brands are realizing it might not be the answer.
Programmatic advertising does offer the largest scale, but its mass impressions come at the expense of audience intent. Brands are reaching shoppers at all different moments in their browsing experience, not just when they’re in a purchase mindset.
Furthermore, programmatic advertising can result in ads being served on questionable inventory - limiting your control over where your brand’s advertising actually appears. For publishers, this irrelevancy can be just as consequential - if you own a food blog and an advertisement for a diaper company shows up on a featured recipe, it might make readers lose their appetite and not want to return.
Key Differences
1. Intent
Reaching audiences in a purchase mindset is one of the key differentiators between contextual commerce media and programmatic advertising. We mentioned above how programmatic advertising strives for maximum impressions by reaching as many potential consumers as possible - all with unknown mindsets.
Contextual commerce media engages consumers in the right mindset by delivering brand messaging and media in relevant environments - like featuring advertisements for specific ingredients directly within recipe pages.
2. Efficiency
Because it reaches audiences at specific, intentful moments in their purchasing journey, contextual commerce media leaves way for a potential higher level of media efficiency than programmatic.
By getting in front of inspired customers rather than customers who have wavering or irrelevant intent, contextual commerce media works to eliminate wasted impressions. This helps put ad dollars to a more strategic use, and can help increase media efficiency.
3. Reach
Finally, contextual commerce media aims to go beyond later-stage, on-site customers to reach a larger pool of new and lapsed shoppers. Advertisers that leverage contextual commerce media can activate media at scale to extend commerce media efforts beyond the retailer environment.
For example, Chicory recently worked with a popular multivitamin company to help them reach a health-aware audience on off-site platforms, such as recipe pages - results showed over 33% of shoppers reached in the campaign were new and lapsed.