Marketers offered 'semantic' online targeting system

Brand owners will now be able to reach online audiences based on the content they are consuming at the very moment an ad is served to them, as well as on their interests, in a new platform designed to breach the gap left by the death of advertising cookies.

The technology has been devised by targeting firm Semasio, which uses natural language processing to analyse the semantics of website content and user behaviour, and adtech firm the Trade Desk. It is claimed that agencies and brands using the Trade Desk’s system can now use these semantic insights to make smarter targeting decisions when planning, implementing and optimising campaigns.

Omnicom Media Group, whose clients include Disney, John Lewis, McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, and Volkswagen Group, is the first agency to sign up for the targeting platform, which it will deploy in the UK and Germany.

The agency’s UK managing partner of technology Chris Swarbrick said the group was constantly exploring new opportunities in programmatic advertising for its clients. He added: “Customisable semantic targeting is a key component of our annalect custom audience (ACA) offering, and this new development has the potential to align the power of semantic analysis with contextual targeting.

“We are already an expert user of Semasio custom audiences, so this opens up a strategic opportunity for us to reach specific, bespoke, audiences on browsers where third-party cookies are no longer supported.”

The Trade Desk director of data partnerships Christian Walter added: “In the current situation, context plays an important role in two respects. Firstly, Semasio provides advertisers with valuable insights and thus the security of optimally reaching the desired target group in various subject areas.

“Secondly, the relationship between user data and environments for targeting can be combined in such a way that lessens a dependence on cookies. Furthermore, the global scaling of Semasio gives our customers the necessary perspective for international campaigns.”

In July, UK broadcaster Channel 4 signed a programmatic advertising partnership with the Trade Desk which it claims will offer client marketers the ability to target 23 million viewers at scale, across its live and on-demand services.

The Trade Desk is one of several demand-side platforms (DSP) to offer access to Channel 4 inventory, such as Celebrity Gogglebox, Great British Bake off, Escape to the Chateau and Grand Designs programmatically. This gives brands access to audiences across connected TV and other devices – while allowing Channel 4 to further improve its access to brands and agencies across the entirety of the open web.

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