Mumbai: India recently celebrated its 75th Independence Day—a notable landmark to look back at and cherish all the achievements of our young yet grandiose nation. Our march towards progress, led by our leaders, has witnessed the evolution of brand India. The influence of marketing strategies is evident in the making of brand India; especially, the smart and catchy “Atmanirbhar Bharat” movement. Now, countries have become brands and navigated their way to the hearts of the masses. However, it is important to note that marketers still face an uphill battle when it comes to achieving independence from poor media quality. A new Juniper Research study has found that the value of digital advertising spend lost to fraud will reach $68 billion globally in 2022, rising from $59 billion in 2021.

Going with the theme of the month-Independence Day-let us look at a few solutions designed to help marketers overcome every challenge and take advantage of every opportunity that digital media presents to gain independence from poor media quality.

Contextual targeting for stronger consumer connections: Google recently announced that cookie depreciation has been delayed to 2024, allowing more time for marketers to adapt and strategize for the seismic transition of cookie-less ad targeting. Advertisers need solutions for reaching their desired audiences in suitable spaces, and contextual targeting solutions deliver precision to maximise the impact without relying on third-party cookies. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-backed technology solutions comprehend content the way a human would, ensuring that your message reaches the consumers who will connect the most with your brand.

Integral Ad Science (IAS) recently released a study titled “Ad Context & Attention” conducted in partnership with Tobii, the global leader in eye tracking and a pioneer in attention computing. The study revealed how increased consumer attention to contextually relevant ads leads to greater purchase intent and brand favorability. Contextual relevance was effective in generating a positive impact on brand engagement, favorability, and memorability. Key findings from the study are mentioned below:

    Contextual targeting strategies yield stronger consumer attention

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    Contextually relevant ads drive outcomes, significantly boosting brand favorability and consumer purchase intent

    In-context ads generate higher memorability and increase brand recall and awareness among consumers

More attention means better conversion: Marketers who rely heavily on digital advertising constantly emphasise the ever-increasing and high cost of digital advertising. Therefore, it becomes essential to understand and implement solutions that tackle low attention in digital marketing. For digital ads to make an impact, they need to be seen — not just served. However, as many as one-third of digital ads go unseen by consumers in certain environments.

In today’s world, marketers need to reach the right consumers, in the right places, and in the appropriate context to help build a connection between the potential customers and the brand. Before this happens, ads need the opportunity to be viewable. To emphasise the importance of the environment or consumer interaction, a prime example is avoiding the placement of a car ad on a news report about a car crash. Such an ad placement is unsuitable for a car manufacturer. Interestingly, IAS’ research on whether media quality drives attention and outcomes uncovered that viewability and time-in-view have a medium correlation (which intuitively makes sense). Moreover, when only looking at impressions on contextually relevant pages (i.e., a Toyota ad on an automotive site), the correlation becomes more vital. For example, when we analysed the automotive vertical, we saw that when the context was relevant and optimised for viewability, there was an 8.3-second increase in time-in-view for every 10 per cent increase in viewability rates. This was 2.4x higher than in a non-optimized context.

Here’s a preview of what we discovered:

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    Time-in-view increases as viewability and brand safety increase

    57 per cent increase in conversions for viewable and brand-safe impressions compared to non-viewable and not safe

    171 per cent increase in conversions for impressions with time-in-view greater than 15 seconds

Attention remains the bedrock of media quality assurance. The longer your ads are in front of consumers—in the right environment—the greater the opportunity to leave an impression.

Use technology to optimise highly effective advertising campaigns: When you are building a brand and trying to establish a connection with a potential customer, every moment and impression counts. For example, total visibility, a solution from IAS, helps advertisers gain impression-level financial insights and media quality verification to find the true cost of flagged media. Total visibility saves advertisers an average of 24 per cent of the budget that would otherwise be lost in the supply chain.

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In addition, IAS’ automated tag solution with Google reduces tag wrapping time to seconds, provides mid-flight optimization, and streamlines reporting, so you can launch and modify campaigns faster.

As automated ad sales gain traction and sophistication around the world, media quality levels will also rise. Programmatic solutions will help marketers and advertisers alike take their digital campaigns to the next level. For the modern-day marketer, it is imperative to know exactly where every rupee of their ad spend goes. With the right technology by your side, it becomes easier to maximise your media spending and minimise waste. To gain independence from poor media quality, marketers must take control by using technological solutions to ensure their digital advertising campaigns are highly efficient.

The author of this article is IAS’ India lead for strategic partnerships Saurabh Khattar.