Digital marketing & adtech

→ One privacy-compliant alternative to cookies is contextual advertising, which doesn’t require specific user information but rather shows context-appropriate ads — think travel-related ads next to an article about tourism.

→ So far, this practice has relied largely on keyword searches, but companies are now developing better AIs that can also decipher positive or negative sentiments.

→ With the outphasing of cookies complicating the reliance on third-party data, companies are looking for better ways to collect first-party data (the type volunteered by users via online surveys, for example).

→ While this is a legal workaround to cookies, sceptics argue that it’s not a complete transformation of ad practices, as companies are still targeting users and using their data rather than developing alternative (or semi-anonymous) user profiles.

→ With less precise targeting available in the future, the pressure is on to produce compelling ads — not just ones that are effective because they reach users at the right time.

→ This leaves an opening for startups to support the creation of ads that don’t take expensive shoots or clunky tech to produce and tweak, particularly with video formats gaining in popularity on social media. Leading streaming services — Netflix and Disney+ among them — plan to adopt ads in the future, creating what’s sure to be a key channel.

→ Breakthroughs don’t come easily in mature sectors, but there’s a chance that machine learning might transform advertising just like the mobile and internet did.

→ While this could be applied to anything from copywriting to ad testing, the challenge for startups will be to assert themselves against the AI capabilities of incumbents — or find niches overlooked by them.