The new era of contextual advertising is not just focused on becoming more privacy-centric following the impending phaseout of third-party cookies but rather it is also focused on driving efficiency for businesses and offering new ways to engage with its consumer base through multiple channels and varied advertising stipulations.
As part of the What’s NEXT Interview series, MARKETECH APAC spoke with Marc Zander, global chief client officer at Teads, to learn more about the new strategies and insights in the new era of digital advertising. The company’s cloud-based omnichannel platform enables brands to implement programmatic advertising campaigns across the global ecosystem of quality digital media.
To begin with, Zander shared that while artificial intelligence has been at the core of the latest trends in digital marketing and advertising, there has a been a shift from predictive to generative AI in the industry, noting that Teads’ proprietary contextual advertising runs on predictive AI and has been in effect for a significant period of time.
“From a Teads perspective, we’re in a great position because we use AI in everything we do and have been doing that for the last 10 years. And we use it very much from a predictive perspective to make sure that we maximise the effectiveness and efficiency of our client’s advertising budget,” he said.
Zander also added, “We’re moving very much from predictive AI to generative AI and looking again to see how we can create multiple variations in ad context to provide the best possible solutions.”
He also notes how Teads is using AI for creative optimisation, as well as measurement and prediction tools in its system, making AI an integral part of their offerings for their clients.
Part of the change that he also observed in the industry is the shift in media consumption, specifically moving away from linear TV to connected TV (CTV). Such shift has made Teads fully embrace this shift, resulting in them building a quality brand safe for clients that ensures a fraud-free ecosystem for brands online.
Meanwhile, when asked about his perspective on the move to cookieless advertising, Zander mentioned that this is more of a good news for Teads, as its services is centred around contextual advertising. This means that with them having access to data from their partner publishers, they are able to get much more quality and quantity of data that doesn’t infringe any consumer privacy.
“We’ve been essentially cookie-free for the last three years, and we’ve been working over the last two years to prove to our clients and our advertisers that we can deliver at least the same, if not better results, in a cookieless world. Whilst a lot of advertisers may think “what do we do in a cookieless world”, Teads is already cookieless by default, and over 75% of everything that we do is cookieless,” he explained.
In terms of advice for brands to future-proof their digital advertising strategies, Zander offers three particular actionable advice for marketers to follow. They include having a strategic look on the media supplies being put in the system, deciding on who you want to work with and leverage what they can do, practise responsible advertising, as well as reducing carbon footprint.
“From our perspective, a phrase that I use a lot is “we’re only just starting to scratch off the surface of our potential”, and so we are working with more and more partners, [and] we’re really excited because we’ve grown very quickly,” he said.
Zander also advised, “We live in a world now where the best marketers are breaking down the silos between creative, media, data and insight. Whilst it’s a more complicated ecosystem, it also has tons more potential than it had in the past.”
For more of Zander’s insights on the future of digital advertising in 2024 and beyond, check out the full video interview on our official YouTube channel or check out the podcast version at our official Spotify page.
