IAS announces enhancements to Context Control

Contextual segments represent a way of targeting audiences which is not reliant on identities.

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Integral Ad Science (IAS) has announced enhancements to its Context Control solution for publishers and advertisers. Context Control helps advertisers to circumvent inappropriate environments for digital advertising as well as to reach audiences consuming specific types of content. Advertisers can now select from more than 300 contextual segments, whether to protect brand reputation or target relevant audiences. Publishers can boost inventory value by matching contexts to advertisers’ needs.

One recent activation saw a 20% lift in CPMs and a 120% lift in clickthrough rates. The tool is available through a number of leading DSPs including Adform, Amobee and MediaMath.

Why we care. They’re taking the cookies away! Nobody really knows yet, but perhaps post-cookie digital advertising will be a successful, rewarding mix of first-party identity-based targeting, FLoC and the established walled gardens. On the other hand, reach might be decimated. If anything like the latter happens, contextual targeting, which doesn’t rely on identities at all, is going to be back in fashion with a vengeance.


About the author

Kim Davis
Staff
Kim Davis is currently editor at large at MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for almost three decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Shortly thereafter he joined Third Door Media as Editorial Director at MarTech.

Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.

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