By Vanessa Lyons, CEO at ThinkNewsBrands
The phasing out of third-party cookies is driving a fundamental shift in media planning, with a renewed focus on contextual advertising as a privacy-conscious and effective alternative.
With contextual advertising, the media is the indicator of audiences’ needs and interests and the strategy by which to target them. As such, selection of the right media based on needs and interests is fundamental to success.
But other factors including diversity of content, relevance, reach and trustworthiness are also crucially important and planners should consider these when making their selections.
Within this context, Total News Publishing emerges as one of the best media types for contextual advertising campaigns.
Diversity of content
Written news publishing covers a wide range of topics, from politics and business, to lifestyle and entertainment, to sport and culture. It also features sector and industry-based content including automotive, financial, technology, food, education and many others.
This rich content landscape provides ample opportunities for advertisers to reach diverse audiences based on their needs, interests, and the reasons and contexts in which they are consuming content.
Reach
High-reach media that can carry relevant content is particularly important in contextual advertising because it helps ensure as many appropriate people as possible are exposed to the advertising.
The latest Roy Morgan readership figures show written news reaches 97% of Australians (or 21.4m) aged 14+ each month. That is a staggering number.
It means written news has the power to deliver large audiences, regardless of age, income level, location or any other segmentation factor, ensuring more of the right people are exposed to any given campaign.
Relevance
A recent nationwide study of more than 2,000 Australians covering media perceptions and behaviours found written news is the most relevant high reach channel for contextual advertising – more than search, social media, radio, online video or TV.
Relevance has always been fundamental to contextual advertising (and advertising generally) because consumers see the ads as more aligned to their current purpose, useful, informative, and less disruptive. This increases engagement which leads to brand memorability and propensity to purchase, key ROI KPIs.
Trustworthiness
If media is considered trustworthy and credible, ads shown within it are more likely to be perceived as relevant and reliable by the audience. For contextual advertising, this is of vital importance.
Journalists and editors create and fact-check written news everyday, so ads appear alongside quality, safe and trusted content, and nothing inappropriate.
No wonder a recent study by FiftyFive5 found that advertising in Total News Publishing is considered 18% more trustworthy when indexed to all other media.
As a greater focus is placed on contextual advertising, Total News Publishing stands out as a media type of immense promise. Media planners everywhere should invest in its powers and qualities.
Find out how Total News Publishing can improve your media mix [email protected]
ThinkNewsBrands helps advertisers and their agencies understand how advertising in today’s news content drives real business results.
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This story is in partnership with ThinkNewsBrands