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When it comes to US voter sentiment, there is a clear generational divide that extends across feelings on hot-button political issues, local vs. national political involvement, optimism about the upcoming election season, and the overall state of the country.
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Basis Technologies and GWI have partnered to provide this data to help navigate voter beliefs in this competitive election year.
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In 2020, many leaders committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at their organizations in response to the movement for racial justice set in motion by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Four years later, some those commitments appear to be wavering, with forecasts estimating that organizational DEI investments will fall by 13% in 2024 compared to 2022. In the advertising sector specifically, recent layoffs at Google and Meta resulted in downsized DEI programs, and investment in diverse-owned media companies has slowed.
It seems that for many companies, amidst continuing economic uncertainty and in the lack of acute public pressure such as that felt in the wake of Floyd’s murder, DEI has been relegated to a “non-mission critical” investment.
Despite these trends, much of the advertising industry remains committed to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, and there is ample opportunity for continued prioritization and growth of DEI efforts.
To further explore how leaders can make meaningful strides toward DEI at their organizations, we sat down with Lois Castillo, Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Basis Technologies. Lois, a veteran of both DEI and advertising work, recently wrapped up Basis Technologies’ first virtual IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility) summit, an event aimed at integrating IDEA principles more deeply into Basis’ organizational culture. Below, she shares what companies can be doing better in their DEI work, how DEI leaders can anchor themselves amidst the complexity of that work, and how the IDEA summit served to advance Basis’ DEI-focused goals.
Lois Castillo: First, the obvious answer: Not doing it.
By this point, leaders should understand that DEI is not just an ethical imperative, or good for business, but something organizations can’t survive without. The world is a diverse place that’s only getting more diverse, and if companies don’t reflect that increased diversity, they’re just not going to make it. When businesses don’t change with the times, they perish—for example, look at what happened to Blockbuster’s once streaming TV became the norm. The same thing goes for leaders: If you’re not doing your own work and development around DEI and bringing that into your organization, you’re not going to be leading for much longer.
When it comes to companies taking action, a common mistake I notice is treating DEI as solely the responsibility of HR. While fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion among employees is crucial, that’s just one aspect of the work. Companies that fail to make a real impact are likely fixating solely on this aspect instead of adopting a holistic approach that extends beyond their own workforce.
My team takes a three-pronged approach, addressing DEI in the following areas:
Additionally, I think it’s worth noting that companies that don’t include accessibility in their DEI work are missing the mark. To be truly inclusive of diverse team members, we need to work towards an accessible workplace—one that considers the spectrum of ability and neurodiversity and works to ensure that everyone on those spectrums can succeed.
LC: Well, I start with transparency and honesty—I don’t pretend I know everything. But I love people, and I’m curious about people, and I’m committed to constantly learning about the issues that people experience so that I can better address them in my work.
It’s true that all the axes of diversity among us can get overwhelming if you start to think about it, and that there’s a lot of work that must be done to address those axes individually. At the same time, there are ways we can address all of them at once, like creating shared language and behaviors for interacting with each other in the workplace that are rooted in respect and accountability—for example, calling someone in instead of calling them out when they make a mistake.
This isn’t easy work, that’s for sure. It’s not for the faint of heart. But that doesn’t mean you give up!
LC: First, let me break down what the summit looked like. We organized a variety of sessions, each with an expert speaker who shared stories and insights based on a specific aspect of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA). We had sessions on topics including how ageism shows up the workplace, how to foster inclusive environments for neurodivergent folks, and what great allyship looks like in practice. In addition to presentations from our experts, the sessions provided space for dialogue, where our employees could share personal experiences, ask questions, and engage with each other.
One of my main goals behind the event was to help move our culture forward by grounding everyone in the same language and knowledge. There are so many people with so many different life experiences at our company, and I wanted us to get grounded around the complexity and the multifaceted nature of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think when people hear the word “diversity,” they’re often thinking of gender and race. But we’re diverse in so many ways, and they all intersect. So, advancing our people’s knowledge and vocabulary of those differences was a big part of the event.
LC: I hope people walked away with curiosity about all the different ways people exist in the world, and with actionable tools that can help them in their own learning journeys around inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. Many of the topics at this specific event were geared around self, encouraging people to investigate their own experiences. I hope the sessions inspired people to get curious about their own experiences of difference in the world, as well as their triggers, blind spots, and biases. It’s important to get curious about yourself, because that will more than likely translate into curiosity about others’ experiences.
I think my favorite part of the summit was just watching the chats in these sessions and seeing all the engagement and the different questions and contributions people had. I loved seeing how participants felt free and safe enough to share their vulnerability. It’s really meaningful to see presentations and conversations resonating with people, and to see them feel secure enough to bring their personal lives and experiences into conversations with their colleagues.
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Learn more about Basis Technologies’ commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility here.
Artificial intelligence is transforming the world of social media advertising—and fast. But when it comes to a channel where backlash can be particularly swift and unforgiving, just how fast should brands adopt these new technologies?
Social advertisers are seeing a boom in AI-powered advertising tools, and teams are facing increased pressure to embrace them to harness the speed and efficiency they promise. At the same time, some of these tools—particularly those powered by generative AI—have come accompanied by new concerns around both quality and brand safety, as the race to bring new AI solutions to market has resulted in many of them feeling like they’re still works in progress.
Advertisers worry about the quality of AI-generated ads, given events like Google’s recent suspension of its Gemini AI chatbot’s ability to create images of people after it generated historically inaccurate images. And a recent study found that only 38% of consumers have a positive view of AI, calling into question how AI-generated ads will be received.
A healthy dose of skepticism is, well, healthy. But these concerns, while well-founded, don’t mean advertisers should avoid testing and learning with AI-powered tools that fit their goals. There are a variety of ways advertisers can begin adopting these technologies to tap into their benefits while maintaining caution around things like brand safety. As automation- and AI-led solutions become the new normal in digital advertising, it’s critical that teams start developing their skill sets and increasing their familiarity with these tools to ensure they can use them with confidence and enjoy the increased efficiencies they provide.
AI has already started to change how advertisers target audiences on social media. Many platforms—including Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn—are beginning to pull back on the number of manual controls they’re giving advertisers to connect with target audiences. Instead, they’re moving advertisers towards AI-powered tools that identify the most appropriate target audiences for their campaigns. For instance, Meta’s Advantage+ Targeting feature automatically identifies targetable audiences based on factors like performance data, consumers’ interactions with other ads in the same vertical, and the content consumers are looking at across Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook.
In some ways, this is a very exciting development. We’re seeing solid results from our own use of these tools, so the numbers are speaking for themselves. On the other hand, it’s a bit nerve-wracking: Advertisers aren’t used to letting platforms take the wheel like this, and if you have a very specific target audience in mind—and you're spending an enormous amount of money trying to reach them—you want to know that you're serving ads to the right people. The shift toward AI-powered audience targeting may end up creating yet another black box to baffle and frustrate advertisers desperate for transparency.
However, this is the direction these platforms are going in, which means we’ll eventually reach a point where advertisers won’t be able to revert to those very specific, manual settings they’d grown accustomed to. Because of this, it’s critical for advertisers to at least begin testing and learning with these tools to grow more comfortable with this shift.
Of course, having AI handle the targeting doesn’t mean advertisers should just set and forget these campaigns. It’s critical to review performance data and assess whether the AI-powered tools are actually accomplishing their goals. For example, if an advertiser is running a lead gen ad, and Facebook is recommending some fairly broad targeting settings, is that actually driving quality leads? Maybe… or maybe not. In this new, AI-driven social world, advertisers will need to carefully assess and adjust their strategies accordingly.
Social platforms are also empowering advertisers to create assets like copy, images, and entire ads via AI. There are a number of significant benefits to these tools, the biggest being simplicity, speed, and ease of launch. This type of built-in efficiency could radically transform how advertisers develop and scale their social campaigns. Advertisers can generate and test new creative variants across different audience segments for more fine-tuned campaigns, or even experiment with entirely different creative approaches to see which resonates more strongly with consumers.
However, efficiency without effectiveness is ultimately inadequate, and many advertisers have real concerns around this shift towards AI-generated content. Without sufficient quality control and campaign monitoring, advertisers using AI-generated ads run the risk of wasting money on ineffective creative—or, worse yet, garnering some serious backlash from consumers.
There’s also some concern that we’re going to get to the point where most (if not all) of the ads on social are generated by AI, and we may well hit a point where consumers don't want to see AI-generated assets, but will instead desire something that feels a little more authentic. Considering this, advertisers should start to think about how they can strike a balance and find the right opportunities to use these tools, but not necessarily allow them to dictate all their social media advertising and messaging efforts.
Social listening is an increasingly key advertising tool, providing insights that can significantly impact a brand’s strategic approach. Manual social listening can be time-consuming and tiresome, but new AI-powered social listening tools can review and process huge amounts of data and sentiment and automatically pull out the top takeaways for advertisers’ immediate use. For instance: What are the top concerns of consumers in a certain category? What does overall sentiment look like? And why is it negative or positive?
Comparatively speaking, these AI-powered social listening tools are also a safe and impactful way for social teams to leverage AI, as they aren’t generating anything that is subsequently going out to consumers. As a result, this is a solution that’s seeing a high rate of adoption: In Q4 2023, social listening was the third-most popular use of AI (after chatbots and copy generation) among brands and retailers, with 40% saying they use AI-powered social listening tools.
All in all, social listening offers even the most AI-averse advertisers a low-risk, high-reward avenue for harnessing the power of AI.
The best ways to leverage AI-powered tools for social media advertising will differ from agency to agency and brand to brand: Some are ready and willing to go all-in on generative AI, for instance, while others may approach adoption at a slower pace. Whatever pace you choose, the important thing is to test and learn in some way on tools that fall into each of these three categories. The future of social advertising is AI-driven, and advertisers who don’t start getting comfortable with these technologies will lack a competitive edge as these solutions grow more commonplace and become more advanced in the coming years.
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Curious about how your peers feel about generative AI, which GenAI advertising tools they’re leveraging, and how often they’re using them? We surveyed over 200 marketing professionals from top agencies, brands, non-profits, and publishers to get a pulse check on the industry’s sentiment towards and use of GenAI. Read all about it in our report, Generative AI and the Future of Marketing.
It was early 2020 when Google first announced plans to deprecate third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. Now, several years and numerous delays later, those once-distant plans are coming to fruition: Cookies were turned off for 1% of users as of early 2024, and they appear set to be deprecated for all users by the end of the year.
Google is by no means early to the party when it comes to taking a stance against the legacy identifier, considering that Mozilla’s Firefox started limiting cookies back in 2013 and Apple’s Safari followed suit in 2017. But given that Chrome currently accounts for more than 66% of the global browser share, Google’s move will have the biggest impact on advertisers.
In the years since Google’s initial announcement, the digital advertising industry has been aflutter with conversations around alternative targeting solutions for a cookieless world—from contextual targeting, to geotargeting and location-based targeting, to collecting and maximizing first-party data, to tools like Google’s Privacy Sandbox.
But targeting isn’t the only thing that will be transformed by cookie deprecation. A recent survey found there are two key challenges that are top-of-mind for advertising professionals as we head into a cookieless world: Targeting and measurement/attribution. As the digital advertising industry stands on the precipice of cookie loss, the conversation is expanding to include more comprehensive solutions around not only targeting, but measurement as well.
Since the advent of the third-party ad server, marketers have grown used to empirical metrics housed within reporting modules: They knew exactly how many view-through conversions they were getting and the (relatively) precise path to conversion, and they could easily measure ad frequency. This was all enabled by third-party cookies, which tracked a user’s experience as they navigated the digital space.
As Google turns off third-party cookies for its users, advertisers are losing the cookie-fueled reports that they’ve relied on for years. Without them, advertising teams must reconsider how they both assess campaign performance and tell those performance stories to either clients or teams. And given that 30 million Chrome users have already had cookies turned off, the time to make that shift is now.
Among the industry leaders we work with, the ones who are adapting more quickly than their peers are those who understand how their buying decisions, audience strategies, and performance expectations need to shift, and are actively working to change how they communicate performance stories to their clients and teams.
For instance, cookie-based reports used to allow advertising teams to say, “This person saw my ad on this channel, they saw a retargeted ad X days later on this other channel, and then they purchased this product after X amount of time.” Now, without cookie-based data, teams will need to get comfortable telling stories that sound more like, “We invested X amount on this channel, X amount on this channel, and X amount on this channel. Though we can’t track conversions on the individual user level like we used to, we see that sales went up by X amount based on business data, that search terms peaked on this day, and that social engagement grew as well. Using various data sets, we can infer that those ads played a part in driving awareness, consideration, and, eventually, conversion.” Teams can also leverage data they gain from modelling to make projections about performance based on media spend, as well as cookieless conversion attribution to measure post-click conversions in a privacy-friendly way.
Just like with cookieless targeting, there isn’t a silver bullet solution out there that’s going to make measurement as precise as it was with third-party cookies—and advertisers should approach any claims that a certain solution can do so with a healthy amount of skepticism.
Instead of hoping for a fix-all solution, teams across the industry will need to experiment and try out different measurement tools to determine what works best for them in a cookieless world. It’s OK to not have a single path forward, and it’s OK to try different approaches—but it’s not OK to just keep waiting. In this new landscape, it’s about being comfortable with experimentation and adaptable to performance.
Tools like cookieless conversion attribution that rely on click strings or Google’s Privacy Sandbox reporting can give advertising teams some insights on conversions for anonymized groups of users in a privacy-friendly way. Strategies like media mix modeling—which rely on statistical analyses of media spending rather than individual user information—are another solution digital advertising teams might consider as they rethink measurement. Teams that get comfortable with modeling out what to expect from performance vs. having hard figures to rely upon will have an edge once third-party cookies are completely gone. Other tools like brand perception studies and audience panels can also prove useful when it comes to post-cookie storytelling. And if teams haven’t started optimizing their first-party data processes? Considering that first-party data is useful for both targeting and attribution, it’s a strategy that’s critical to invest in.
Leaders should also recognize that this new way of measuring is far more resource intensive, and that they won’t be able to have a digital media associate pull a comprehensive report to send to clients or stakeholders like they could when third-party cookies were around. In a cookieless world, there will be far more people—and a far greater level of skill—involved. Leaders who start to plan for this now will be well-positioned once cookies have been fully deprecated.
Whether industry professionals choose to grapple with it now or later, Google’s third-party cookie deprecation will change measurement across the digital advertising ecosystem. Leaders who work with their teams to reapproach how they communicate campaign performance, and to experiment with alternative measurement solutions, will set themselves up for success as the cookieless future becomes the cookieless present.
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Interested in how your peers are adapting to signal loss and preparing for the cookieless future? Basis Technologies surveyed over 200 marketing and advertising professionals across agencies, brands, non-profits, and publishers to find out how ready they feel for a world without cookies, what cookieless solutions they’re implementing, and more. Dig into the findings in our report, Identity vs. Privacy: Digital Advertising in a Cookieless World.
Earlier this month, droves of marketers and advertisers descended on Austin, Texas to soak in the sights and insights of SXSW 2024. Here are three insights from the notebooks of Basis’ Media Innovations & Technology team to help marketers keep 2024 moving in the right direction.
Podcasting increasingly stands as a contender in advertisers’ paid media strategies. That’s thanks to its unique ability to meet consumers where they are and building trust and affinity not just for podcasters, but for the brands that support them.
Despite the proven performance benefits, podcasting remains an under-invested channel for most brands. For marketers that are evaluating how to add podcast placements into media buys, start by forming a crawl, walk, run strategy approach. Messaging style is critical—after all, podcasting is, at its core, storytelling. Ad content should take on this same style to meet consumers in a mindset they’re already in. Brands should also cross-pollinate paid messaging into complementary channels like Instagram and TikTok to extend their presence, discover new audiences, and maximize their investment.
AI and machine learning will continue to improve podcasting’s capabilities—from content analysis, to niche audience segments, to creating content for advertisers and podcast producers.
Finally, advertisers should keep an eye on AI to potentially be applied as a measurement solution.
Data is the ultimate commodity in a cookieless world—particularly when it comes to effectively understanding and reaching audiences. One form of data that doesn’t get enough recognition in its ability to transform advertisers’ paid media strategies is causal data. At its heart, causal data is focused on measuring a brand’s ability to shift audience perceptions and beliefs about that brand.
Advertisers who want to leverage the power of causal data will need to get up close and personal with their audiences. This requires dedicated, qualitative audience research to understand who your audience is and what they care about—not just the tropes that have been created about them. Understanding the emotional drivers behind consumers’ decisions and perceptions of a brand can bridge data and art, transforming insight into creative messaging that resonates on a deeper level.
When it comes to measuring causal data outcomes, advertisers need to get curious and ask their audiences questions that dig into cause and effect. For example: “How did you feel about a brand before?” and “What touchpoints or communications led you to change your mind?”
Accessing the power of causal data involves a hands-on effort from advertisers, but the outcomes are invaluable, especially as consumers are increasingly loyal to the brands who can prove they truly understand who consumers are and what they need or care about.
The past few years have seen a continual churn of emerging technologies, hitting the scene with a healthy dose of hype. Marketers have been enchanted by the newness and novelty of these technologies (partially thanks to the brain’s novelty center), causing them to put discernment on the back burner.
However, hype and innovation often diverge, meaning marketers will need to override that novelty center to effectively evaluate new technologies based on the intrinsic value they present to a brand on an individual basis.
Marketers who ask questions of hyped-up solutions will be poised for successful deciphering of hype from reality. Consider questions like, “What value does this present to my organization?” “Is there an actual product available to us for use?” “What resources (personnel, investment, time) will be required?” And “What are the outcomes we can expect from using this solution?”
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Not able to make it to this year’s SXSW? Watch Noor Naseer’s session on navigating hype in advertising on demand and download the slides today.
Advertisers have had a lot on their plates in recent years, as they’ve navigated the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic uncertainty, ever-increasing media complexity, the emergence of AI and, of course, third-party cookie deprecation.
Amidst these dynamics, the allure of hype can be irresistible—particularly when a new technology, product, or solution promises a shortcut to making life better for marketers. But not all “trends” are alike, and while some of these technologies and solutions are real game changers, going all-in on the current hype won’t necessarily make a lasting impact on advertisers’ core challenges.
So, how can advertising leaders distinguish between solutions that are over-hyped from those that are hyped, well, appropriately?
Noor Naseer, Basis Technologies’ VP of Media Innovations + Technology, dug into this issue in detail in her presentation at SXSW 2024 in Austin. Check out the recording below to see all her insights and recommendations around navigating hype cycles on-demand:
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Want to dive further into Noor’s presentation? Click here to download the slides from her talk.
The forthcoming “cookie-pocalypse” marks a pivotal moment in the advertising industry, as marketers grapple with a privacy-centric landscape and widespread signal loss.
Factors like Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, new and ever-evolving digital advertising regulations, and privacy demands from consumers have driven the shift to privacy-first advertising in recent years. Now, with Google appearing set to deprecate third-party cookies in its Chrome browser by the end of 2024, we are on the brink of a new age of advertising—one where cookieless solutions reign supreme, and where alternative identity solutions are not simply a suggestion but a requirement.
Of those cookieless solutions, contextual might not be the shiniest one: It’s been around for a while and, candidly, it’s kind of boring. But in rare and exceptional instances such as this, old + boring doesn’t necessarily have to = bad. Just ask baseball fans, or anyone in the middle of a riveting game of Monopoly!
So, what is contextual targeting, how does it work, and why is it here to stay in the digital advertising landscape? Read on to find out!
Contextual targeting works by serving ads on a website, webpage, or other digital channel based on the content it contains. Essentially, it displays contextually relevant ads alongside content that is likely to appeal to a target audience. Heard an ad for a home security system while listening to a true crime podcast? Or seen an ad for a meal delivery service while reading a recipe on your favorite food blogger’s site? These are both examples of contextual targeting at work.
Instead of tapping into user ID-based data that was collected or bought to show ads to specific consumers (i.e., someone looked at a website for home security systems, so now I’m going to target them with ads about my home security offerings), contextual targeting uses keywords, topics, semantics, geography, and other factors to reach consumers in the spaces where they spend time (i.e., I’m going to target ads about my home security offerings to the audience of a true crime podcast, as security may be top of mind for many of those listeners).
Contextual targeting is a bit of a throwback, harkening back to mediums like linear TV, print, and terrestrial radio—in other words, places where third-party cookies do not exist. But the solution is much more adaptable in digital advertising settings, making it a sensible (if not increasingly critical) element of modern marketing strategies. Heck, even Google has embraced foundational elements of contextual targeting with Topics API, part of the search giant’s proposed solution to third-party cookie deprecation in its Chrome browser.
Contextually relevant environments are found through keywords, topics, intent analyses, emotional tone, geography, contextual synonyms, negative keywords, and other parameters provided by an advertiser. For instance, a computer brand might target the keyword “apple” and use intent analyses, a specific type of semantic targeting, to distinguish between people looking for “apple” the fruit and people looking for the tech brand, to ensure their ads are served to the correct audience.
Once those parameters have been set, contextual advertising technology scans webpage or app text, images, multimedia elements, page structure, geographic parameters, and more to determine the best match for your advertisements. You can also add additional parameters in a demand side platform (DSP) like dayparting, bids, ad unit type, and even cross-device targeting. From there, all you have to do is submit a programmatic bid through your DSP to place your ad on any contextually relevant pages and/or environments. And with new content cropping up—across webpages, podcasts, connected TV content, and more—you can get as broad or specific as you want.
Contextual targeting is typically seen as an ideal solution in more privacy-friendly browsers such as Firefox and Safari, or on privacy-minded operating systems like iOS. And, as more and more advertising teams have tapped into contextual, it has evolved far beyond just display: Digital advertisers can take advantage of contextual targeting on channels like connected TV (CTV), audio, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) as well.
There are a variety of types of contextual targeting, as well as a whole host of different channels that support this tactic.
Keyword and topic targeting allow advertisers to align their ads with specific search terms or thematic contexts. And, thanks to advancements in AI and machine learning, advertisers can now take contextual a step further with semantic targeting. Semantic targeting adds a layer of sophistication to contextual targeting by aligning ads with the meaning and sentiment of the surrounding material (think back to our earlier example about search ads focused on the keyword “apple”). Additionally, advertising teams might opt for a geo-based contextual targeting approach, which ensures ads are placed where they’ll be most meaningful to the people who spend time in a certain place. This is a particularly potent approach for localized campaigns—for example, a museum might leverage geo-based DOOH ads in local tourist hotspots to drive visits.
And what about when it comes to different channels? From display, to social media, to digital audio, digital out-of-home and beyond, there are opportunities to leverage contextual tactics across a variety of digital formats. Digital audio tends to lend itself quite effectively to topic-based and semantic contextual targeting. This could look like a beauty brand focusing on podcasts in the health and wellness categories, or a virtual therapy company homing in on content focused on self-improvement. Digital out-of-home, on the other hand, provides the opportunity to lean into geo-based contextual tactics. For example, a grocery store might focus on placements in transit centers near their brick-and-mortar location, knowing that commuters are both nearby and might be thinking about what groceries they have at home as they make their evening commute. Connected TV and streaming TV allow for topic, semantic, and keyword-based contextual approaches where, for instance, a sports betting company might choose to focus on content focused on, well, sports. By using different types of contextual targeting across these varied channels, advertisers can craft a holistic, impactful, and privacy-friendly experience for audiences.
Contextual targeting allows advertisers to reach their audiences in contextually relevant environments at the right place at the right time—all while respecting their privacy.
Since it doesn't rely upon personal data, contextual targeting neatly sidesteps the entire privacy issue. That makes contextual a robust and compatible solution for a world where consumers, legislators, and advertisers are putting privacy at the forefront. For display ads, it also adds an additional layer of filtering for page quality, helping boost your brand safety by avoiding lower-quality content and pages that don’t align with your brand standards.
Though it doesn’t rely upon personal data, contextual targeting can be used alongside first-party data to make ads even more personalized and effective. For instance, some platforms offer advertisers the option to use their first-party data to predict which contextual targeting categories will perform best for a brand or campaign, across channels including desktop, mobile apps, and CTV.
Additionally, while it may not be at the top of some organizations’ motivating factors when choosing a targeting solution, contextual targeting is a much more comprehensible and palatable advertising method to people outside the ad industry, who can both grasp and accept the idea of seeing ads that are geared toward a specific situation rather than a specific person. Think of it this way: If you were describing the digital advertising industry to an octogenarian, would it be easier to explain contextual targeting or, say, cross-device programmatic retargeting?
That said, one of the more notable drawbacks of contextual targeting when compared to other methods of digital advertising is that it’s harder to both retarget specific users and to fully track results—particularly in industries with longer sales cycles. As such, most advertisers will find contextual targeting most effective when leveraged alongside other privacy-friendly tactics, rather than as a singular approach.
In addition to its privacy friendliness, contextual targeting comes with the added benefit of being significantly cheaper than most user ID-based targeting solutions. While the CPM for user ID-based ads can run between $1-2, the CPM for a contextual ad display placement can be as low as 5-10 cents—in other words, you only need your contextual ads to be 10% as effective to see the same results.
Granted, this number ultimately depends on how niche the audience—and how competitive the placement—but those same principles can apply to just about any ad targeting type. The important takeaway is that, on the aggregate, contextual targeting is likely to be more cost efficient than user ID-based targeting.
As the advertising industry navigates the complexities of consumer privacy demands and third-party cookie deprecation, contextual targeting offers significant benefits. Not only is contextual an inherently privacy-friendly targeting approach, but it also offers a cost-effective alternative to user ID-based targeting. From display to audio to digital out-of-home and beyond, contextual is adaptable across various digital formats. And though it may be a bit less flashy than other privacy-first options, contextual targeting provides a practical, effective, and digestible solution that helps brands reach their audiences.
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Looking for a deeper dive into how advertising professionals are preparing (or not preparing) for increased signal loss and a world without third-party cookies? Basis surveyed more than 200 marketing and advertising professionals across top agencies, brands, non-profits, and publishers to gauge their feelings on privacy and identity as we stand on the precipice of total third-party cookie deprecation. Learn more in our report, Identity vs. Privacy: Digital Advertising in a Cookieless World.
When you’re online looking for crowdsourced recommendations from passionate people, where and how do you look? With so much product recommendation content out there these days, we can’t be the only ones adding “Reddit” at the end of our searches (à la “best vacuum cleaner reddit”) in search of honest recommendations and reviews.
In fact, this is likely one of the most common ways Reddit shows up in the lives of people who don’t participate regularly in one of the social media network’s 100,000+ interest-based communities. Add it all up, and Reddit is the third-most visited website in the US and the seventh-most visited site in the world.
Amongst advertisers, the platform isn’t as widely leveraged as YouTube or TikTok. But with a variety of factors bringing new challenges to historically dominant social media networks—not to mention the strides Reddit has made in recent years to up its advertising value—some advertisers are newly considering whether the platform makes sense for their brands.
If you want to learn more about what Reddit is, what it offers advertisers, and how to make the most of its advertising opportunity, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for everything you need to know about advertising on this one-of-a-kind social platform.
Unfamiliar with Reddit? You’re not the only one! Before we get into how and when advertisers might want to use the platform, let’s get clear on how it works.
Reddit is home to thousands of interest-based communities, or subreddits, where users connect and converse with each other. The site has over 51 million active monthly users across the US and more than 430 million around the globe.
One of the main ways Redditors engage is via posts, which can be marked as public to the entire internet or as viewable only to other Redditors in a certain subreddit. Users engage with posts by commenting and either upvoting (clicking a button to indicate that they found the post valuable or relevant) or downvoting (clicking a button to indicate that they did not find the post valuable or relevant) the post. The more upvotes a post gets, the more visibly it is displayed on Reddit. Check out the front page of Reddit to see the most popular (i.e., the most upvoted) posts of today—they range from breaking news, to funny videos, to celebrity gossip, to interviews with interesting people.
It’s a great question, as Redditors are a unique bunch!
One of the most unique benefits of the Reddit audience is that it’s a highly engaged one: As Reddit itself says, “Redditors don’t doom-scroll—they engage with intent.” Reddit is also a great way to reach millennials, as they represent about 40% of the platform’s users. At the same time, Redditors trust the content on the platform: 85% of them agree that their peers post things that are “honest and truthful”, which explains why so many turn to the site when searching for reviews and recommendations.
That being said, the fact that Redditors are so highly engaged and passionate about the topics they engage in comes with some caveats for marketers. Redditors are protective about their communities—a quality which has led to the perception that there’s an anti-advertising sentiment on the platform. According to Reddit, however, Redditors don’t dislike ads in and of themselves—they dislike “sneaky” ads.
Despite the platform’s large, engaged user base and its clear staying power, there’s a sentiment in the advertising community that Reddit has often been the platform playing catch-up when it comes to developing innovative features for users and advertisers alike.
Still, despite its relatively simple interface (to put it kindly…), Reddit has made some serious strides in just the past year to make itself more attractive to marketers—and, in particular, performance marketers. In 2023 alone, the platform announced Reddit Brand Lift and Reddit Conversion Lift for enhanced measurement, as well as Product Ads and Contextual Keyword Targeting. The platform has also invested heavily in delivering a personalized and localized user experience to international audiences. Its untapped search advertising potential (which it will no doubt try to harness amidst hints that an IPO could be around the corner) makes Reddit a worthy channel for advertisers to, at the very least, keep an eye on.
Overall, while Reddit has thus far struggled to establish itself as a cornerstone in the social advertising landscape, the platform is in an exciting place to capture more of marketers’ social ad spend—if it plays its cards right.
While Reddit can work for brands in most industries, marketers working in sectors that have particularly active audiences on the platforms, such as consumer, gaming, and tech, are especially well-situated to tap in. However, Reddit’s big marketing appeal—its ability to direct ad spending towards very specific target audiences in a privacy-friendly way—is relevant for businesses of all kinds.
Because Reddit is home to so many niche communities—from birders, to board gamers, skincare addicts, sound system afficionados, and everyone in between—there’s a big opportunity to serve ads specifically to people who are already engaging in an interest relevant to your product or service. Marketers using Reddit can target by community (to serve ads to a specific subreddit), interest (to reach a larger audience across multiple subreddits), location (to target Redditors in specific geographies), and custom audiences (to re-engage with consumers who have already engaged with their business in some way).
Even more, as the advertising world prepares for the loss of third-party cookies in Chrome and adjusts to the uptick in privacy-focused digital advertising regulation—not to mention the clear consumer demand for privacy-first marketing—contextual targeting will become a critical piece of any brand’s marketing investment. That makes Reddit’s community- and interest-based targeting options all the more valuable. These contextual capabilities will be a big differentiator for Reddit and may drive more marketing dollars towards the platform as social ad spend continues to fragment and marketers prioritize privacy-friendly targeting opportunities.
The golden question! Let’s dig into what you should consider when investing in Reddit to ensure your dollars are used strategically.
First and foremost, make sure to read up on Reddit’s Advertising Policy and ensure that all your campaigns comply.
Next, when it comes to crafting creative for Reddit, here are some key tips:
Once you’ve crafted your creative, make sure to set a clear objective or KPI to analyze the performance of your campaign against. This will help you keep track of what’s working and what isn’t once the campaign is up and running.
From there, make sure to set a long enough flight for your test to ensure that the platform can optimize based on initial learnings. Your test should last for at least four weeks, and preferably for eight weeks. As part of the testing process, incorporate A/B tests—of ad formats, ad creatives, headlines, post text, and CTAs—into your campaign to see what resonates the most with your target audiences.
Next, while Reddit can be a standalone platform for advertising efforts, it works best as part of a full funnel, omnichannel approach. While the platform has come a long way in improving its performance marketing offerings, it has a lot of value as an upper-funnel channel, as many users visit the site to research and discover new ideas and products. As such, it can work well for building brand awareness with highly engaged target audiences. To move prospect audiences further down the funnel, marketers can pair Reddit campaigns with channels like Meta and Google Search to round out their omnichannel efforts.
Despite its effectiveness, adding a new channel to any digital campaign can be daunting for marketers, if only due to the sheer number of different platforms they must navigate. To ease this burden, some teams may seek out platforms that automatically pull in campaign performance data from multiple platforms—including social platforms such as Reddit, Snapchat, and TikTok—and centralizing them within a single interface. This provides advertisers with a single source of truth, allowing them to view their campaigns holistically, while saving time and reducing manual labor by eliminating the need to toggle back and forth between platforms.
Phew! That was a lot. Let’s wrap it up with a brief summary of what was discussed—or, as Redditors like to tag summaries under particularly long posts, TL;DR (too long; didn’t read).
Overall, Reddit is chasing some of the more established social media marketing channels. That said, the platform is in a particularly interesting position as social ad spend fragments and the industry quickens its pace towards a privacy-friendly norm. For advertisers who want to tap into engaged, niche communities, Reddit presents a great opportunity to test, learn, and grow.
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Social fragmentation and privacy-friendly marketing are just two of the trends shaping the marketing landscape today. Want a better understanding of all the trends that will impact advertisers in 2024? Check out our 2024 Trends Report.
In an industry marked by high penetration—nearly all US adults have bank accounts—and consequently fierce competition, enticing new clientele while retaining existing customers is critical for financial services advertisers. While 84% of US customers say they’re “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their primary bank, a smaller but influential 34% say they’d be willing to switch over to a new financial institution—demonstrating that efforts curated towards both retention and acquisition are equally important.
To navigate this landscape successfully, advertisers must understand consumer behavior and address their goals and concerns through creative served on the most impactful media channels. So, what exactly are those goals and concerns, and how can advertisers meet consumers with the right messages, in the right places and the right times? Let’s start with an exploration of today’s banking consumer:
Consumer trust in traditional banks and credit unions is high relative to other financial services providers such as tech companies and neobanks, and they’re generally satisfied with their primary bank, to the point where six in 10 customers have held their primary accounts for more than six years.
In light of that trust, satisfaction, and entrenchment, what motivates banking customers to shop around and ultimately switch? The top reasons include increases in fees, poor customer service, and better rates elsewhere. Generally, customers’ biggest industry concerns aren’t that different: increased fees, high interest rates, the possibility of data theft, and overall bank stability affecting the safety of their money score highest in impacting their financial services decisions.
Once consumers are on the hunt for a financial institution, their top drivers are online banking capabilities, brand reputation, online customer service, and the ability to help customers achieve their financial goals. What goals, you ask? Topping the list are saving for the short-term and the long-term, improving credit scores, and paying off credit card debt.
These factors show the importance of meeting consumers’ expectations around both banking features—especially online—and staff expertise. By addressing their needs and issues directly, financial industry marketing teams can increase customer trust and satisfaction, leading to improved retention of existing customers and acquisition of bank switchers.
Touting benefits and addressing concerns without a strategic plan to distribute those messages along the customer journey is as good as shouting into a bank vault—and then shutting and locking the door. Industry marketing teams can uncover paid media opportunities when they understand where and how consumer banking customers perform their research.
As customers seek information about their finances and explore products and services that can help them save money and tackle debt, they’re turning to a variety of sources: friends, family, and financial advisers, of course, along with bank websites, social media, and TV and online advertising. Similarly, they become aware of financial products and services through bank websites, apps, and branches; word of mouth; and communication tools like social media, direct mail, and search.
Demographics do play a role in media preferences: Consumer banking personas aged 55 years and over tend to layer newspapers and magazines onto their search, social, and convergent TV consumption, while those younger than 55 are nearly exclusively digital media consumers, with social, streaming audio, and CTV comprising their favorites.
Realizing the personal nature of finances and many of the sources customers trust, consumer banking marketing teams can find success with similarly personal channels like social media, and by using recommendation-based messaging such as reviews and testimonials. Beyond that, knowing the array of resources used by such a wide swath of people during their research, an omnichannel advertising approach grounded in thorough, customer-centric research can help teams craft a holistic experience with efficient reach and outcome-driven loyalty and acquisition results.
The financial services industry continues to go digital, from all points of view: customers and their online banking expectations, financial institutions and their digital innovations, and industry marketers and their digital media spend. Consumer banking marketing teams who follow this digital trajectory can both reach customers and keep up with—if not find ways to innovate and surpass—their competition.
The number of digital banking users in the US—about 82% of the population and rising—is making online banking the new normal, with mobile banking making up the lion’s share of online banking activity. But there’s increased competition outside of traditional banking: Consumers, especially younger ones, are showing interest in doing business with nonbanks, saying they’d open a financial account with the likes of PayPal, Amazon, Walmart, and Apple, and use of nonbank peer-to-peer payment platforms like PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle continues to grow. That sort of industry disruption could cost financial institutions market share at a highly competitive moment in time.
As customers rely on digital media for financial information and digital platforms for banking, financial services marketers are realizing the value of digital advertising to reach varied audiences with varied needs. The majority of the total industry’s $5 billion ad spend is digital, as monitored by Vivvix, yet consumer banking’s $1 billion budget leans slightly in favor of traditional advertising.
Marketing teams looking to reach digital-minded audiences and intercept people who are eyeing disruptive competitors can capitalize on the not-fully-realized potential of online advertising to meet consumers where they are—and, for critical customer acquisition, where some competition is not.
Consumer banking institutions have an opportunity to grow their market share despite near customer saturation. While most existing customers are generally satisfied with their primary banks and feel a high level of trust in them, a significant portion say they’d be willing to switch primary banks for specific reasons.
Financial services marketers who combine consumer media preferences, including digital media, with creative that speaks to their financial goals, online banking expectations, and general industry concerns can all but bank on retaining their firmly rooted customers while cashing in on new customer acquisition.
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