Why Contextual Relevance and Brand Safety Matter Now More Than Ever
It’s not just you - the digital media and advertising landscapes feel like they’re changing every week now. Is Google ever going to deprecate third-party cookies? How much should we worry about ever-changing SEO models? How’s consumer perception around our brand?
One constant that has existed long before digital media, is the need for a brand to be able to reach, engage, and inspire a consumer to take an action. Today, more than ever, how a brand shows up matters.
This is where the need for contextual relevance and brand safety come in.
What is Brand Safety?
Brand safety, simply put, refers to the upkeep of your brand’s reputation when you advertise online. In other words, how is the content, quality, and contextual relevance of the ad maintaining your product and brand ethos?
Contextually irrelevant ad placements are a risk in the programmatic advertising age. If your product appears on an unrelated, vertical-averse page, consumer association, purchase intent, and overall perception will plummet.
Contextual relevance and brand safety points to larger issues in media efficiency - issues that contextual commerce media seeks to tackle. Placing your brand in an irrelevant environment will only reach passive consumers - running the risk of wasted impressions.
Consumer buying journeys are driven by awareness, consideration, and opportunities for conversion - ensuring your contextual relevance and brand safety in each one of those steps will be a critical strategy moving forward. Let’s dive into three reasons why that might be.
Three Reasons Why Contextually Relevant, Brand-Safe Content Is Key
1. The Nature of Programmatic
Behaviorally targeted programmatic media has been the go-to strategy for the last three decades - mainly because of its mass reach, no matter the contextual relevance.
Beyond the fact that consumers are sometimes bothered by this model, programmatic advertising can result in ads being served on questionable inventory - limiting your control over where your brand’s advertising actually appears. X (formally known as Twitter), recently fell under fire for hosting advertisements next to irreverent, extremist content. This caused multiple brands, like Hyundai and IBM to stop advertising on the platform altogether.
Keyword blocking has historically been the main strategy to fight this contextual irrelevance. Keywords are selected, and advertisements won’t show up on any page that features those keywords.
Let’s say you’re a marketer for a pasta brand who wants to block a keyword like “pot” - due to its drug-related connotation. Sounds sensible enough. Then you realize that you’ve essentially blocked off any opportunity to show up on a recipe page that calls for cooking pasta in a “pot.”
In other words, keyword blockers exclude pages purely based on a word’s presence in the URL and content - overlooking the overall contextual relevance.
2. Fraud, Misinformation, and AI
Generative AI emerged in the public sphere three years ago. Since then, its genuine potential for advertisers has been marred by bad actors like content farmers - companies that use automated tools to generate mass amounts of algorithm-friendly content, regardless of quality or even truth. The rise of misinformation has been the story of the new age, and gen AI’s advent has only exacerbated its presence.
Recently, NewsGuard found over 950 AI-generated information sites. These sites are generated specifically for the aim of attracting advertising revenue - with no regard for journalistic integrity or merit. These fraudulent sites have little to no human-supervision, either, serving as hotbeds for harmful content.
Interestingly enough, AI itself is being used to combat these generated sites and, by extension, securing contextual relevance. Companies like OpenAI and Meta have announced their newest AI models come with more advanced content moderation and hate speech detection.
For human-input, some agencies and media brands think more intentional keyword blocking is the answer to staying off these content farms. Again, keyword blocking is great in theory, but as we’ll soon see, contextual commerce media might be the more impactful answer for maintaining contextual relevance and brand safety on the artificially generated web.
3. Brand Reputation
The truth is, consumers themselves are just as aware of the adverse effects of brand safety as advertisers are. When Harris Poll surveyed thousands of U.S. adults, they found that:
Nearly 90% of consumers feel brands bear responsibility for ensuring ads run beside content that is safe
61% of consumers say both the brand and publication where the ad is placed are equally responsible for ensuring content safety
67% of consumers would be likely to stop using the brand/product if they viewed the brand’s digital advertising beside false, objectionable or inflammatory content
Risks to brand reputation increase when you appear next to contextually irrelevant content. So often when we talk about reputation, we mention online reviews or organic engagement - reflecting the ethos of your brand through its digital media presence is equally, if not more, important.
Higher brand presence through programmatic advertising leads to higher risk in brand perception. Let’s see how contextual commerce media can help strike a perfect balance.
Ensuring Contextual Relevance Through Contextual Commerce
We mentioned earlier how behaviorally targeted programmatic media sacrifices customer intent for mass off-site reach. The polar opposite on that spectrum is reaching consumers on-platform on a retailer’s website.
Contextual commerce media leverages contextual targeting to activate relevant content, reaching consumers in the right mindset.
Chicory, for example, works with CPG brands and grocery retailers to drive results through contextually relevant content across an exclusive network of recipe publishers and blogs.
In a way, contextual commerce media works to solve all the risks of harmful content exposure that behaviorally targeted programmatic media offers, while still maintaining high impressions, and serving consumers in a far more relevant mindset.
Beyond risk mitigation, eliminating wasted impressions is a key benefit of adopting contextual commerce media. Getting in front of inspired customers puts your ad dollars to strategic use, increasing your media efficiency and allowing you to tap into a network of customers in a purchase mindset.
Ultimately, building and maintaining contextual relevance is at the crux of contextual commerce media. Plus, in an ever-changing digital landscape, it could help transform brand safe content into commerce media for CPGs, driving media efficiency and results.
Want to learn more about how brands and agencies are driving full-funnel impact with Contextual Commerce Media? Read here about Chicory’s innovative ad suite for advertisers.