As digital ad identifiers have been throttled in recent years, many in the industry are looking back to contextual targeting.

But, when the context is as limited as show descriptions, that may not be enough to power the depth of targeting many ad buyers want.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jon Wallett, VP of Sales, East Coast at Seedtag, Says: “It’s pretty well known that categorical genre level based of targeting doesn’t really lend itself to many options.”

Contextual AI Powers Omnichannel Strategies
Seedtag is a company that specializes in contextual advertising technology. Their services focus on analyzing digital content to place relevant ads without relying on personal data. By utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence, Seedtag offers advertisers an alternative targeting method while addressing privacy concerns.

Seedtag’s AI technology, affectionately called Liz, is at the core of everything the company offers. The goal is to help brands figure out their audience targeting strategy in a cookieless world and use that to inform creative development, messaging distribution, and omnichannel strategy.

“Our technology is very much founded in going beyond just your standard data point and really focused on adding a bit more value to the overarching holistic approach that brands take to their media,” Wallett explains.

Network-Level Analysis Provides Flexibility and Nimbleness
Rather than relying solely on keyword or phrase-based contextual targeting, Seedtag has developed a network-level analysis approach that identifies trends as they’re happening in real-time and adapts creative messaging accordingly.

“Having this larger scalable network view of a mass amount of content also better informs our models and allows us for quicker learning, allows us for the ability to be more flexible and nimble as things come down,” Wallett says. “And that deeper machination of the models is super important to how we develop for the long term when it comes to innovation as we progress into things like connected TV.”

Contextual AI Unlocks Incremental Opportunities
In one example, Seedtag worked with a CPG brand that was set in its ways of thinking about contextual as an endemic channel. By using a holistic approach, Seedtag says it was able to identify incremental opportunities based on like-minded interests being adapted by the brand’s audience in the interest world.

“We learned something new about their audience. We learned that there was a whole sub context to where they were exploring a nuance of a product that this brand had available that they were putting to market,” Wallett says.

“So it allowed us to then speak more eloquently to that audience and drive better brand lift, better purchase intent.”