California, USA – Samba TV has announced its acquisition of Semasio, a global provider of contextual targeting and audience data solutions. This strategic acquisition enhances Samba TV’s capabilities in delivering privacy-first targeting across digital and connected TV (CTV) platforms, further solidifying its position as a leader in AI-powered omniscreen advertising.

By acquiring Semasio, Samba TV will expand its global footprint as well as its capabilities for advertisers to define and reach granular audience segments through a unified approach that combines contextual, behavioral, and demographic data. 

Semasio, with over 100 customers in 50 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, maintains over 1 billion stable user profiles globally and analyzes over 2.5 billion web pages each month, enabling advertisers to optimise campaigns in both ID-based and ID-less environments.

The acquisition enables Samba TV to expand the availability of its AI-powered solutions by integrating its video data into Semasio’s platform, enhancing advertisers’ ability to reach consumers with contextual relevance across digital, mobile, and CTV platforms. 

The Semasio platform is already widely deployed among programmatic trading desks enabling brands, agencies, and data owners to expand and activate first-party and third-party data at scale in dozens of countries worldwide. This combined offering addresses the increasing need for brands to operate in a cookie-less, privacy-conscious world, where first-party data and contextual intelligence are crucial for success.

Lastly, combining Samba TV’s data and identity solutions with Semasio’s global audience and capabilities enables audience and contextual strategies to coexist seamlessly. By integrating Semasio’s robust data platform with Samba TV’s proprietary omniscreen measurement tools, advertisers will now have access to more precise and comprehensive solutions for campaign optimisation and audience engagement across all digital and TV environments.

Aden Zaman, CCO at Samba TV, said, “Before this acquisition, we were partners with Semasio and saw huge potential in the platform and for the team behind it. As a first-party data owner, we recognize and appreciate the importance of identity resolution, data distribution, and onboarding. The acquisition of Semasio expands our value proposition to data companies with global reach into the world’s most important media platforms.”

As part of the acquisition, ​​Semasio CEO Jeff Ragovin will be transitioning leadership of the company to general manager Zac Pinkham.

“Joining forces with Samba TV empowers us to fully realize Semasio’s vision by expanding investment into our next-generation platform, which seamlessly integrates audience-based and contextual targeting with greater reach across more channels. I’m excited to see how Samba TV’s expertise and resources will propel Semasio to new heights,” Ragovin said.

Creating a strong connection with consumers by aligning content with their preferences might appear to be a straightforward approach for engagement. However, it’s surprising how often advertisers fail to hit the mark, resulting in missed chances to elevate brand perception, boost engagement rates, and cultivate a more authentic image. Crafting a personalized advertising experience for consumers isn’t just an option—it’s a strategic opportunity for brands to enhance relevance and strengthen their relationship with their audience.

Contextual relevance isn’t new, one could argue it was the original form of “targeting” within print. It was also our first foray into targeting digitally but along the way audience-based buying became more favorable.

As we transition into a new era of data, where audience-based buying is facing challenges, we must adopt a more thoughtful and holistic approach to connect with consumers. A pivotal aspect of this holistic approach involves aligning your brand with contexts important to your target audience.

According to eMarketer, 54% of marketers intend to increase the utilization of contextual data, many still grapple with: “What context is best suited for my ad?”

At the core of contextual discovery lies relevance, yet we often find advertisers struggling to define what truly holds relevance for their consumers. At Teads, we’ve spent years analyzing billions of data points sourced from our publisher partners, affording us a unique perspective on the contexts that resonate most effectively with audiences, as well as the contextual links that extend beyond the obvious, endemic contexts.

We firmly believe that a few straightforward steps can facilitate advertisers in making a seamless transition from contextual discovery to a fully effective contextual strategy.

Understand Your Audience

Let’s not overlook significance of audiences. Before focusing on the relevance of your ad, you have to understand your target audience. What sparks their interests? What challenges do they encounter? What motivates them? Knowing your audience inside-out enables you to identify contexts that will truly resonate with them.

Contextual Analysis

Within your contextual analysis, focus on two pivotal factors: Endemic Association and Audience Interest.

Endemic Association: This often serves as our initial touchpoint. For instance, placing an ad for a gaming console within gaming-related content. While this approach is the low-hanging fruit and necessary in your contextual strategy, are there untapped opportunities? Using Teads’ contextual suggestions tool we can dive a layer deeper, our AI analyzes content consumption to understand what contexts are most often consumed by people reading about your core topic expanding reach without sacrificing relevancy.

Audience Interest: Armed with audience insights, precisely target your consumers where they’re most captivated. Leverage audience insights tools to identify the contexts in which consumers are most engaged. This approach rounds out a cohesive contextual strategy.

Define Your Message

Clarity in your message is essential. What is the key takeaway you want users to gather from your ad? Having a well-defined message will further drive the relevancy of your brand for a consumer. For a more personalized experience consider DCO based on the contexts you’re targeting

Test and Learn

Let’s acknowledge that there’s a lot we still don’t know. Embrace the potential of testing new contexts, as this allows us to tap into users in unexpected environments. A/B testing across different contexts yields valuable insights into which environments fuel outcomes and efficiencies.

The power of relevance is not only in understanding your audience but also in seamlessly weaving your brand within contexts that matter to them. By analyzing, adapting, and refining your approach, you’ll unlock the true potential of contextual alignment, enabling your brand to resonate in a more powerful way with your target consumers. Teads, with its expertise in contextual advertising and innovative publisher partnerships, is uniquely positioned to support a robust contextual strategy. Our partnerships provide exclusive access to content and contextual signals, further enhancing your brand’s ability to authentically connect with your audience.

This article is made possible by Teads.

Sydney, Australia – Global brand suitability platform Channel Factory has announced that it will be expanding its operations in Australia, and has hired Kevin Wong, former head of product marketing at TikTok, to be Channel Factory’s new vice president for Asia-Pacific. This new development will help Australian brands have greater control over contextual targeting and conscious advertising on user-generated content platforms.

Wong will be working alongside Alex Littlejohn, managing director for APAC at Channel Factory, to spearhead the growth of Channel Factory in Asia-Pacific. Wong will also be responsible for leading operations, product strategy, development, and driving sales growth.

Channel Factory’s technology allows brands to contextually target audiences on user-generated content platforms, brands have greater control over ad placements in a way that aligns with their brand values and eliminates reputational risks.

In addition, with the company being a YouTube measurement program partner, Channel Factory focuses on maximizing brand suitability, turning YouTube’s five billion videos and 500 hours per minute of new content into efficient advertising opportunities.

Speaking about his appointment, Wong said that he is thrilled at joining the company, adding that they want to achieve their mission of building a better digital advertising ecosystem by connecting brands with the right consumers in the right context; content that incorporates a brand’s definition of what is and is not suitable for that brand to be running adjacent to.

“Currently, there is a disconnect between the level of investments brands are making in user-generated content platforms, and the level of contextual targeting of audiences. Our goal for Channel Factory is to eliminate this reputational risk [while] maintaining the ROI of their campaigns across YouTube today and all platforms in the future,” Wong said.

Meanwhile, Littlejohn commented that their expansion to Australia is a step further in their mission to enable CMOs to consciously connect with consumers. He also added that Wong has a wealth of international experience and they are delighted to have him spearhead their operations in Australia and the wider APAC region.

“Channel Factory’s brand suitability solution goes far beyond traditional brand safety technologies and brings the contextual alignment of traditional TV and broadcast environments to user-generated content, while embedding its own brand values into the media planning strategy. Brand suitability is the metric that marketers need to work towards, in making sure they maximize their return on ad spend,” Littlejohn said.

Along with Wong, Channel Factory has made a number of diverse experienced hires, including Zenith’s Rhys Bennett as sales solution director.

Singapore – Amid consumers’ online content consumption, in-feed advertisements show up to monetize the traffic it gets from online readers. And with that traffic, online consumers now expect that there should be an evident correlation between the article they are reading versus the in-feed ads they are served, new data from technology company Integral Ad Science and Neuro-Insight, a neuromarketing and neuroanalytics company.

Said data was collected not through traditional survey data methods but rather through examining brain activity in response to contextually matched ads, showing context can significantly impact ad memorability.

According to the report, matching informational ads with an article’s message creates a very strong detail memory response, and drove a 36% lift in detail memory compared to when there was no match. This can be especially relevant for campaigns that focus on a clear call to action that brands want consumers to respond to.

Part of what consumers also get a closer affinity to as well is that endemically matched ads drive higher memorability: Endemically matched ads, or those that align with and match the surrounding content based on vertical, such as auto ads near auto content, drove a 23% lift in activation within the part of the brain responsible for the memory of practical details, which includes key messages, calls to action, and branding elements. These ads also boosted global memory by 27%, or the memorability of broad themes, overarching narratives, or audio and visual elements.

‘Detail memory’ pertains to the type of memory based on specific themes the consumer observes among the advertising being served, whereas ‘global memory’ pertains to the type of memory based on broader topics.

Meanwhile, ads focused on an emotional response are best paired with content themes. Ads that aim to leave an emotional memory, a particular feeling, or overarching brand perception among consumers performed best when placed alongside articles with a matching theme, such as an ad with a seasonal summer theme adjacent to summer season content. The study found that emotive ads drove 40% higher global memory within thematically matched articles compared to when there was no match.

Lastly, consumers recognize ads as part of their online experience, as the vast majority of consumers (63%) viewed ads as part of their online reading, not disruptive or a distraction. Only 36% of participants said they scrolled past an ad without reading it.

“Using the latest neuroscience and neurometrics, this groundbreaking study demonstrates the specific ways that a webpage’s context can dramatically alter how audiences recall and respond to ads. As our industry prepares for a cookieless future and increasingly moves away from audience targeting, advertisers have a significant opportunity to be intentional with contextual targeting tools, such as IAS Context Control, to drive greater campaign outcomes,” said Tony Marlow, CMO at IAS.