6 reasons to connect with Verve at DMEXCO 2023

6 reasons to connect with Verve at DMEXCO 2023

Verve is back in Cologne for DMEXCO 2023! With so many exciting events, sessions, and speakers on the agenda, choosing how to spend your time at Europe’s premier digital marketing and tech expo and conference can be tricky. That’s why we’ve rounded up six top reasons it’s worth your while to spend some time with Verve while you’re in Cologne. 1. Supply is not enough.  To create quality ad experiences confidently, brands and advertisers need premium, trustworthy supply. Industry experts like Jounce Media and Pixalate have recently validated Verve’s exceptional mobile app and CTV supply. At DMEXCO 2023, we’ll talk about what “premium” really means, and what advertisers should expect from their supply partners. 2. Snag a free toolkit to navigate digital identity. Turn uncertainty into confidence to navigate an identifier-free future. Our free guide to understanding and choosing identity alternatives is a valuable tool for anyone in advertising or tech. It’s a roadmap to navigating conversations about identity confidently, whether it’s with internal stakeholders or potential vendors. (You can pick it up at Booth D-23 in Hall 7!) 3. Find out how and why to raise the bar for contextual targeting. Every contextual platform promises to place ads alongside relevant, recent content. But does every platform deliver? New research compared three contextual platforms in a head-to-head campaign. We’ll share the inside scoop on why the three solutions got very different results. 4. Get creative with #TheArtOfData app, our exclusive collaboration with Getty Images. Use the power of contextual to transform your moment into personalized digital art. Immerse yourself in #TheArtOfData, an interactive creative experience brought to you in partnership with Getty Images. You’ll also discover how brands can now engage consumers in high-profile cultural, sports, and entertainment-driven moments across the open internet with Visual Intent, a first-to-market partnership from Getty Images and Verve. 5. Discover contextual and CTV innovations in mobile user acquisition. Recapture iOS downloads and drive results — without relying on device IDs — with the world’s first fully transparent mobile DSP built for contextual. At DMEXCO 2023, we’ll also share innovative ways brands are using CTV to re-engage mobile users. 6. Meet our team! You can connect with dozens of Verve team members at DMEXCO 2023. We’ll have colleagues representing the whole range of our many solutions, including leadership from Verve, Smaato, Dataseat, and Match2One.  At DMEXCO 2023, Verve is excited to share our newest findings, resources, tools, and inspiration to make media better. Discover the latest innovations in contextual advertising, CTV, mobile, and much more. Let’s connect in Cologne! Find Verve at DMEXCO 2023! September 20-21Booth D-23 in Hall 7Cologne, Germany

Contextual isn’t new, but advancements will solve marketers’ headaches

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared in AdvertisingWeek. It was the rise of behavioral targeting, which tracks users’ online activities and personal data, that saw contextual advertising dethroned as the industry’s default targeting method. Fast forward to today and behavioral targeting is facing serious limitations, while significant developments in contextual are bringing this approach back to the fore. Here’s why . . . In the ever-evolving digital advertising landscape, marketers will face periodic challenges in effectively reaching and engaging their target audiences. Privacy is the latest challenge – and it’s a big one. The focus on privacy began in 2018 with the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. This was followed by similar initiatives worldwide, such as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, Android’s Privacy Sandbox and Google’s upcoming phasing out of third-party tracking cookies on Chrome by the second half of 2024; beginning for 1% of users as early as the first quarter of 2024. Having to navigate restrictions that govern the collection and use of consumer data has left marketers frantically searching for alternative approaches. The advertising industry must go back to the drawing board, and the easiest way to start is by revisiting existing approaches that offer compliant targeting at scale. Contextual is emerging again as the dominant solution for marketers. The drawbacks of conventional approaches Contextual marketing revolves around understanding the environment where an ad appears and tailoring the content based on the relevant factors surrounding the user’s browsing experience. This approach leverages factors such as website content, keywords, location, and device type to deliver relevant and timely ads to users. However, recent research by TPA Digital has found some contextual solutions fall short of meeting their basic campaign goals. Advertisers often find themselves wasting significant spend on ads that fail to reach their target audiences. Inaccurate keyword analysis, limited contextual understanding, and insufficient real-time optimization are contributing to suboptimal campaign performance. The other issue is the growing problem of next-generation “content farms” created to hijack programmatic advertising revenue. An internet trust tool, NewsGuard, is tracking an increasing number of spammy, AI-generated news sites. They expect that generative AI will cause more of the estimated $2.6 billion of advertising revenue per year unintentionally funneled toward misinformation news sites. With this boom in the number of irrelevant, misleading and valueless articles published daily, advertisers now find themselves between a rock and a hard place when it comes to getting quality results from ad spend using conventional contextual targeting. AI-optimized contextual tools offer better targeting The good news is that machine learning, natural language processing, and data analysis are driving innovation in contextual targeting. These new technologies enable advertisers to analyze and interpret vast amounts of data to deliver highly targeted ads to the right audience. By considering the context of where an ad appears, marketers can target the user’s immediate needs and interests with specific messaging, leading to improved engagement and conversion rates. Through these advancements advertisers are able to reach consumers with accuracy and speed, maximizing the chances of engaging them in meaningful ways. Advertisers can also ensure they are able to deliver the personalized and engaging experiences consumers expect. For example, natural language processing technology is enabling hyper-accurate cohort targeting capabilities. There is also the potential for contextual solutions to “understand” and mine content beyond text content, such as brand audio, videos, and apps. Models are also being built on contextual capabilities that understand affinity and match content with the open web. Contextual empowers marketers to leverage their most valuable currency — attention. By moving away from clicks towards attention and reaching consumers in the moments that matter to them, they can fine-tune campaigns at any time towards their desired metrics – and ultimately improve outcomes. This real-time contextual analysis and AI-driven optimization means brands can advertise alongside highly relevant, fresh content, at the precise moment that it is attracting large audiences. As with many evolutionary matters, change can be painful, but also necessary. As the industry is pushed relentlessly towards the edge of the third-party cookie tracking precipice, innovations in contextual are ensuring that marketers can meet and engage with their audiences in the new privacy-first world.

Do you really know what you get from contextual targeting?

When you step away from the creative, the marketing, and the pretty pictures that we use in ad tech, the services that our industry delivers are rather homogenous. I work with some of the world’s most incredible people with remarkable insights, yet I often like looking at the things I do from a 30,000-foot point of view. How much different does the technology that Verve delivers differ from our peers? We all talk about privacy and value transparency in one form or another. We all talk about business outcomes and value-add in one form or another. And for those that provide contextual targeting, we talk about how our technology and platform delivers a brand’s content at the point when media, data, and technology come together. When I fly down to the granularity of our business to look at how Verve truly differentiates itself, the proof is in the pudding. There is a ton of substance beyond the style — and most importantly, there is truth and trust to be found in what we do. It’s not enough for us to tout differences… Like any finely tuned machine, Verve has been conducting different exercises to validate where and how it holds competitive advantage. One piece of technology that I have tremendous interest in is Moments.AI™, Verve’s contextual targeting solution. While contextual targeting is not a new advertising construct, it has received a lot of new interest with third-party cookie depreciation looming on the horizon. We asked ourselves a rather simple question: How much better is our contextual solution than those of our competitors? Better yet, we also asked TPA Labs to help us independently answer the question and verify our claims that we hold some advantage over industry peers.  Verve went to TPA Labs claiming that Moments.AI™ can contextually target content on the open web on the same day as the content is published. We have been able to show how this could enable advertisers to advertise alongside highly relevant new content while it was attracting large audiences. Now, we wanted someone else to say it for us, independently of our point of view or position. TPA conducted a 24-hour campaign targeting new sports-related content in the UK and Germany. Running the campaign for 24 hours on a Saturday during the football season meant there would be lots of relevant content published, and provided a clear timeframe within which the content had to be published. To measure the success of Moments.AI™, we would determine the percentage of impressions that were served on URLs published on the Saturday, and compare it against the same metric of the two alternative vendors. …unless others can tout them with us. Thankfully, TPA Digital independently verified that Verve’s contextual ad targeting is more accurate at targeting new and relevant content than leading alternatives.  Put another way, nearly 45% of impressions delivered as part of this test were wasted. Verve was able to show its efficiency by reducing waste and delivering stronger impact and ROI. Not only were we wowed, but we also got to wondering how many contextually-targeted programmatic advertising campaigns fail to deliver against their most basic objectives.    If I am an agency planner, strategist or brand manager, I would want to know the validity of any associated ad spend. The TPA Digital test proves that if brands want to better connect with consumers through contextually-relevant advertising, they must commit to working more closely with partners to earn full value from technologies available to them. I invite you to learn more about the research and explore our findings.   The industry has seen the power of contextual targeting, but Verve wants to wield that power in more exciting ways, all for client benefits. The best part of contextual targeting is how it helps capture the meaningful moments that matter to brands and customers. When we are successful doing that, everyone wins faster. Ask us how we do it — and do it well.