With increased consumer demand for privacy and the gradual demise of third-party cookies, marketers are turning back to contextual advertising as a go-to targeting tactic.

Contextual isn’t new, but the capabilities are better than ever as machine learning and artificial intelligence have gotten smarter. Contextual tools can now analyze full context of pages across text, images, video, and audio to deliver relevant ads. It’s no wonder that it’s expected to grow 13% between now and 2030.

At Pontiac, we’ve been building and utilizing our Contextual AI tool with Michael Misiewicz for some time.

Pontiac’s Contextual AI goes beyond keywords and leverages Natural Language Processing (NLP) to find the closest matching content to your target. The contextual targeting engine can ingest as few as 3 sample sites or even blocks of text, analyze the input, and build a list of thousands of highly relevant ad-supported target sites to target.

We wanted to put our contextual engine to the test to see how it stacked up against the current market leaders in contextual targeting. Here’s how things went:

The Experiment

We set up a head-to-head test, using the same targeting and keywords parameters across Pontiac’s Contextual AI segment targeting engine and a leading contextual targeting player.

The Approach

We built Pontiac’s contextual audience using 5 specific URLs as a seed list and found +22k valid URL records for targeting about cannabis health!

Screenshot of the Contextual AI audience tool with URL Inputs

The leading contextual players segment was created using keywords.

All else equal (spend, duration, filters, etc.), we built the display campaign that set the two segments against each other.

The Results:

Pontiac Contextual AI outperforms!

The test revealed that Pontiac’s contextual AI audience from absolute URLs outperformed the keyword based contextual segment with 44% stronger CTRs.

It was also more cost efficient, resulting in 10% lower CPMs and a 23% lower CPC.

Additionally, it’s important to note that the contextual partners audience segment also contains data costs. Those costs accounted for 16% of the segment’s media spend!

Pontiac’s segment does not charge a data cost.

Contextual AI performance

The Takeaway

Pontiac’s Contextual AI drives quality performance and better cost metrics. This tool layers on top of Pontiac Intelligence’s audience segments and AI-based optimization models, giving Pontiac a suite of cookieless targeting and optimization solutions that drive performance, efficiency, and results.

Reach out to take your contextual targeting to the next level.