Contextually targeted ads ‘drive more engagement’ than industry standard

Contextually targeted ads drive more than three times more engagement than IAB standard ads, according to new research.

Attention measurement company Lumen Research and contextual advertising business Seedtag have produced the findings in a white paper The Power of Contextual in the Attention Economy.

In terms of attentive seconds per thousand impressions delivered – or an APM score – Seedtag ads drove a total of 2,766 seconds per thousand delivered, which was 3.3x higher than IAB standard units and 37% more compared to social media ads.

The report also found that Seedtag’s ads were more noticed, with 87% ads viewed compared to the IAB standard ads with 61%.

Seedtag ranked highly for holding viewers’ attention, with 3.2 seconds average viewing time for each ad or impression delivered compared to outstream video’s 1.8 seconds.

Contextual targeting serves an ad based on the content and environment it appears in,  rather than data that is held on user, so is seen the ad is served to so does not rely on third-party cookies.

This makes it attractive to advertisers as third-party cookie deprecation approaches next year after Google pushed back its deadline as was discussed at IAB’s Keeping Up with Contextual conference.

Lumen and Seedtag produced the findings in a white paper, The Power of Contextual in the Attention Economy which will be published in full tomorrow. The research used eye-tracking technology to analyse navigation patterns and viewing behaviour in 1,200 UK adults.