Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, OTT video has seen a dramatic rise in popularity and use across the world. CTV and OTT was once seen as merely an alternative to traditional cable and other linear television platforms amongst a small contingent of cord-cutters. Now, they are the industry norm.

No matter your industry, reputation matters, especially regarding the sites you choose for digital advertising without relying on users’ personal data. Organizations are (or, at least, should be) increasingly concerned about brand safety; consumers and clients have more choices than ever when it comes to purchases and services. One poorly placed ad could mean the difference between landing a new client and attracting the scorn of the Twitterverse to tarnish your brand’s reputation—and send sales spiraling. Conversely, an audience viewing a resonating ad at the right time on a reputable media outlet could spark fierce brand loyalty. Building and protecting your brand’s reputation across the advertising ecosystem isn’t always an easy balance to strike. We’ll go over how you can advertise to ...

In May of this year, eMarketer predicted that programmatic advertising spend would surpass $115 billion in the US in 2022. Jounce Media released a report estimating that about 12% of programmatic display ad budgets go to Made for Advertising (MFA) websites.

As anticipated, third-party targeting cookies are finally going away with Google's Chrome ending support for third-party cookies.

Historically, digital advertisers relied heavily on behavioral targeting - powered by browser cookies This tactic misses the mark for real-time content-consumption relevance to what the user is reading or watching. Users are shown ad content that may not be relevant or applicable in the context or at the time they see it. This is where contextual advertising improves impact.

When we launched the Contextual Data Marketplace®, the goal was to bring privacy-safe data sources to contextual strategies. Experian is our newest Contextual Data Marketplace partner, giving advertisers privacy-safe, cookie-free, location-based data for Purchase Affinity and Demographics categories.

We recently sat down with Josh Rosen, President of Reticle - a brand intelligence firm specializing in A.I.-informed emotional content. Reticle was developed out of Hotspex Media to address the growing need of connecting emotional relevance intent of advertisements to contextual environments.

Quality, Context, Optimization The rapid rise of connected TV doesn't mean that all inventory is brand-safe and premium. And it also doesn't mean that you're able to start with the same kinds of controls that you have in other media.

Chris Vargo is an associate professor of advertising and analytics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He teaches in the College of Communication, Media and Information and the Leeds School of Business. His courses focus on marketing, machine learning, news, and media analytics. He is a co-founder and CEO of socialcontext and a Partner in Peer39’s Contextual Data Marketplace. We spent some time with Chris recently to learn more about socialcontext and the work he’s bringing together for the digital media industry.