The right targeting is an indispensable component of native advertising. It is a type of online marketing that is aligned to a certain audience. It is placed in a way that the advertisement is only shown to that particular user group. Contextual text advertising enables a reduction of scattering losses while doing online advertisement.

Furthermore the relevance of the advertisement is increased since only potential interested buyers will see the ad. There are different types of targeting. Today we want to talk about semantic and behavioral targeting.

What is semantic targeting?

Semantic targeting enables the placement of ads in a relevant editorial environment. In semantic targeting the whole content on webpage level is scanned and analyzed by linguistic means. In this type of targeting the adserver recognizes the meaning and the main topics of a single webpage automatically and in split seconds. Accordingly they can deliver the online advertisement of any format to a matching online campaign. For this purpose all terms of a website are regarded and their combination as well as relevance is analyzed with the help of a complex algorithm with human semantic-understanding. Thereby the adserver refers to a huge taxonomic built database with all word meanings, expressions and important proper names. Consequently semantic targeting offers the following advantages:

  • Thematic relevance of advertisement increases the acceptance of the users. That way scatter losses are being minimized and the performance of a campaign is optimized.
  • Targeted addressing of the presumed audience through the possibility of very precise or general thematic targeting
  • Diverse and effective optimization possibilities during the campaign

What is behavioral targeting?

Behavioral Targeting is a further development of the semantic targeting. In this type of targeting technical data is read out but additionally different characteristics are used and considered.  Behavioral Targeting relies on the analysis of the surfing behavior of the user. Therefore for instance the click path of an anonymized user profile is being analyzed. All relevant data is collected through cookies that are transferred to the computer of the user while visiting a website. The total of all characteristics and technical data gives a dynamic behavioral profile that is growing continuously and is customized. Not only the present but also the longer-term interest of the users can be considered with behavioral targeting. The following advantages are reached through behavioral targeting:

  • Due to the exact target group orientation scatter losses are reduced to a minimum. This leads to a higher conversion rate
  • Advertising activities can be applied more efficient and therefore ensure a cost saving.

What type of targeting does plista use?

The plista technology enables an extremely precise targeting so that the delivery of advertising and content can always be matched to the individual preferences of the user. Besides other components plista does a combination of both targeting forms. Thereby collaborative filtering is applied. This highly effective form of behavioral targeting is based upon the assumption that users having interests in common also take an interest in similar subjects. That means that the reading and click behavior of the user is compared with one another. Those users that have similar behavior patterns and interests are identified as statistical twins. They consequently receive similar recommendations for content or advertising.

Author: Lucie Feldt