In the last post we talked about how domain targeting is being deployed for advertisers wanting to reach people on sites about the general category that’s relevant to your products.
In this post, we’ll dive into URL targeting use cases.
This is a way to narrow-cast advertising to people on specific pages that talk about the product or service that you are selling.
The core idea here is to do some upfront setup work to find the key pages that signal an interested consumer.
These pages can live on any website. For example, Business Insider, covers a variety of topics, from business, to lifestyle, travel, and sports. So, while I may not want to serve ads to a visitor on any page of Business Insider, I may want to run on ads on particular pages.
I may for example want to run ads on this URL if I’m selling a software, or service, that allows people to stay safe and have their information protected online.
A great company that does this is Ninjio. Their core value proposition is about educating executives on how to protect their organization from being hacked. This article talks about being hacked. Fundamentally, the article presents the key challenge: a hack just occurred. Ninjio, solves that problem immediately, so it’s a great narrative to run ads on this page.
Certainly, then, Ninjio will want to find other pages that speak to recent hacks, such as these pages:
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Let’s look at this page from Business Insider. It’s about cinnamon rolls.
This page would be great for a company selling artisan cinnamon rolls, or pastries. I found this company Sweet Wheat Artisan Boulanger. They are in Los Angeles, and it’s clear they are targeting people in LA. So, even though this article is about someone in Chicago, contextual ads can be filtered to people who are in LA.
Any page that talks about cinnamon rolls is eligible for this Boulanger to run an ad to reach me, a person reading an article, and watching a video about the best cinnamon rolls in Chicago.
A larger brand like Cinnabon, can also deploy this type of targeting, and extend the targeting to these types of pages:
So you see how easy it is to pinpoint a person thinking about cinnamon rolls, and then giving them an ad for cinnamon rolls.
There are infinite combinations to deploy very granular URL targeted contextual targeting for B2B and B2C businesses. Contextual targeting is one of my favorite ways to make a client’s business grow because it is so controllable, the results are so strong, and we get an opportunity to leverage the robust visual nature of display advertising with video, banners, and native ads.
If you can think about ways to connect your product or service to the types of things people do that signals they want your product or service, contextual targeting really gets the job done effectively to drive sales and leads.
