At A Glance
Experian and Yieldmo collaborate to help marketers navigate signal loss with privacy-safe contextual advertising. By combining Experian’s identity solutions with Yieldmo’s advanced targeting, this collaboration enables effective audience engagement in a world with fewer traditional signals.Note: While third-party cookies are no longer being phased out, this webinar was recorded in 2023 when cookie deprecation was still a key industry focus. The strategies discussed reflect that time frame and remain relevant for addressing broader signal loss challenges.
With major browsers discontinuing support for third-party cookies, marketers must rethink how to identify and engage their audiences. Contextual advertising offers a privacy-safe solution by combining contextual signals with machine learning to deliver highly targeted campaigns. In a Q&A with our experts with eMarketer, Jason Andersen, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partner Solutions at Experian, and Alex Johnston, Principal Product Manager at Yieldmo, we discuss how contextual advertising addresses signal loss, improves addressability, and delivers better outcomes for marketers.
The macro trends impacting marketers
How important is it for digital marketers to stay informed about the changes coming to third-party cookies, and what challenges do you see signal loss creating?
Jason (Experian): Third-party cookies have already been eliminated from Firefox, Safari, and other browsers, while Chrome has held out. It’s just a matter of time before Chrome eliminates them too. Being proactive now by predicting potential impacts will be essential for maintaining growth when the third-party cookie finally disappears.
Alex (Yieldmo): Third-party cookie loss is already a reality. As regulations like theGeneral Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act(CCPA) take effect, more than 50% of exchange traffic lacks associated identifiers. This means that marketers have to think differently about how they reach their audiences in an environment with fewer data points available for targeting purposes. It’s no longer something to consider at some point down the line – it’s here now! Also, as third-party cookies become more limited, reaching users online is becoming increasingly complex and competitive. Without access to as much data, the CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) that advertisers must pay are skyrocketing because everyone is trying to bid on those same valuable consumers. It’s essential for businesses desiring success in digital advertising now more than ever before.
Solving signal loss with contextual advertising
How does contextual advertising help marketers engage audiences with new strategies like machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI)?
Jason (Experian): Contextual advertising helps marketers engage audiences by combining advanced machine learning with privacy-safe strategies. We focus on using AI and machine learning to better understand behavior, respect privacy, and deliver insights. As third-party cookies go away, alternative identifiers are coming to market, like Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2). These are going to be particularly important for marketers to be able to utilize them. As cookie syncing becomes outdated, marketers will have to look for alternative methods to reach their target audiences. It’s essential to look beyond cookie-reliant solutions and use other options available regarding advertising.
Alex (Yieldmo): There’s been a renaissance in contextual advertising over the last couple of years. Three key drivers are shaping this shift:
- The loss of identity signals is forcing marketers to rethink how they reach audiences.
- Advances in machine learning allow us to analyze more granular contextual signals, identifying patterns that are most valuable to advertisers.
- Tailored models now use these signals to deliver more effective campaigns. This transformation is occurring because of our ability to capture and operate on richer, more detailed data.
Reach consumers with advanced addressability
How does advanced contextual advertising help marketers reach non-addressable audiences?
Jason (Experian): Advanced contextual advertising helps marketers reach non-addressable audiences by taking a set of known data (identity) and drawing inferences from it with all the other signals we see across the bidstream. It’s about using a small seed set of customers, those who have transacted with you before or match your target audience, and training contextual models to make the unknown known. Now we can go out and find users surfing on any of the other sites that traditionally don’t have that identifier for that user or don’t at that moment in time and start to be able to advertise to them based on the contextually indexed data.
Alex (Yieldmo): I think the exciting opportunity for many people in the industry is figuring out how to reach your known audience in a non-addressable space, that is based on environmental and non-identity based signals, that helps your campaign perform. Machine learning advancements allow you to take your small sample audience and uncover those patterns in the non-addressable space. High-quality, privacy-resilient data sets are critical for building these campaigns. Companies like Experian, with deep, rich training data, are well positioned to support advertisers in building extension audiences.
Creative strategies that improve ad performance
Why does creative strategy remain essential for digital advertising success?
Jason (Experian): Creative strategy remains essential because it provides valuable signals for targeting and engages audiences effectively. In this advanced contextual world, good creative in the proper ad format that you can test and learn from is paramount. It comes back to that feedback loop. We can use that as another signal in this equation to develop and refine the right set of audiences for your targeting needs.
Alex (Yieldmo): Creative and ad formats are powerful signals for understanding audience engagement. At Yieldmo, we collect interaction data every 200 milliseconds, such as scrolling behavior or time spent on an ad. This data fills the gap between clicks and video completions, helping us build models that predict downstream actions. Tailoring creative to specific audience groups has always been one of the best ways to improve performance, and it remains essential in this new era of contextual advertising. Throughout my career, I learned that designing or tailoring your creative to different audience groups is one of the best ways to improve performance. We ran many lift studies with analysis to understand how you can tailor creative customized for individual audiences. That capability and the ability to do that on an identity basis is.
Our recommendations for actionable marketing strategies
Do you have recommendations for marketers building out their yearly strategies or a campaign strategy?
Jason (Experian): My recommendation for marketers building out their yearly strategies is to be proactive and start testing and learning these new solutions now. I mentioned addressability and being in the right place at the right time. That’s easier in today’s third-party cookie world. But as traditional identity is further constricted, you will have these first-party solutions that will not be at scale, so you’re less likely to find your user at the scale you want. It would be best if you thought about how to reach that user at the right place at the right time. They may not be seen from an identity basis. They might not be at the right place at the right time when you were delivering or trying to deliver an ad. But you increase your chance of reaching them by building these advanced contextual targeting audiences using this privacy-safe seed ‘opted-in’ user set; this is a way to cast that wider net and achieve targeted scale.
Alex (Yieldmo): Build your seed lists, test your formats with different audiences, and understand what’s resonating with whom. Take advantage of some of the pretty remarkable advances in machine learning that are allowing us, really, for the first time to fully uncork the potential and the opportunity with contextual in a way that we’ve never done before.
Contact us
About our experts
Jason Andersen
Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives and Partner Solutions, Experian
Jason Andersen heads Strategic Initiatives and Partner Enablement for Experian Marketing Services. He focuses on addressability and activation in digital marketing and working with partners to solve signal loss. Jason has worked in digital advertising for 15+ years, spanning roles from operations and product to strategy and partnerships.
Alex Johnston
Principal Product Manager, Yieldmo
Alex Johnston is the Principal Product Manager at Yieldmo, overseeing the Machine Learning and Optimization products. Before joining Yieldmo, Alex spent 13 years at Google, where he led the Reach & Audience Planning and Measurement products, overseeing a 10X increase in revenue. During his time, he launched numerous ad products, including YouTube’s Google Preferred offering. To learn more about Yieldmo, visit www.yieldmo.com.
About Yieldmo
Yieldmo is an advertising platform that fuses media and creative to meet audiences in the moments that matter. Using proprietary data and AI, Yieldmo uses advanced targeting to deliver context-aware creative when and where it’s most effective, all while respecting user privacy. The result: ads that belong on inventory brands trust. For more information, please visit www.yieldmo.com.
Contextual advertising FAQs
Contextual advertising works by targeting audiences based on the content they’re engaging with, rather than relying on personal identifiers or traditional tracking methods. Yieldmo’s platform uses advanced contextual signals and machine learning to deliver relevant ads in privacy-safe ways.
Contextual advertising addresses signal loss by focusing on environmental and content-based signals instead of relying on thir-dparty cookies or other traditional identifiers. Experian’s identity solutions complement this approach by enabling marketers to connect with audiences in a compliant and scalable way.
Creative is important in contextual advertising because it engages audiences and provides valuable signals for targeting. Yieldmo’s platform collects interaction data, such as scrolling and time spent on ads, to refine campaigns and improve performance.
Marketers can reach non-addressable audience through advanced contextual targeting, which uses known data, like seed audiences, to identify patterns and extend reach. Experian’s identity solutions and contextual data from, Audigent, a part of Experian, help marketers connect with these audiences in privacy-safe and effective ways.
Latest posts
NEW YORK, June 1, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Are Traasdahl, CEO and founder of Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian, has been named Founder of the Year by the Nordic Startup Awards. The Nordic Startup Awards' Founder of the Year Award recognizes an individual that has shown exceptional achievements in fundraising, customer growth, financial savvy, and/or leadership throughout the past year. The Nordic Startup Awards evaluates hundreds of players in the startup ecosystem, ranging from investors and founders, to developers and journalists in Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Finland. Taking place in two stages, each country selects its nominees for consideration for the regional awards which were held in Iceland on May 31, 2016. Traasdahl is recognized for his continuous investment in Tapad as a whole, as well as his dedication to growing and developing Tapad since founding the company in 2010. He has led Tapad from startup through a steady period of growth resulting in an acquisition by the Telenor Group for $360 million in February 2016. "I am truly honored to be named Founder of the Year by the Nordic Startup Awards, among so many other remarkable leaders in the space," said Traasdahl. "That said, this has always been a team effort. We started Tapad with the goal of giving employees unprecedented growth opportunities while developing breakthrough solutions for our clients. This is a win for everyone at Tapad who has committed themselves to these principles over the past four-and-a-half years." Tapad is reinforcing its commitment to fostering entrepreneurship with the launch of their new Propeller Program. Through Propeller, Tapad will host five early-stage companies at Tapad's New York headquarters for a year to set them up for global expansion. In its inaugural year, the first participants will come from Traasdahl's native Norway. For more information on the Nordic Startup Awards, please visit: http://www.nordicstartupawards.com. Contact us today
NEW YORK, May 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ – Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian, has been honored with two iMedia ASPY Awards. Announced on May 3rd at the iMedia Summit in Lost Pines, TX, Tapad's 2016 ASPY Awards include "Best Customer Service" and "Best Mobile Partner." In 2015, Tapad's proprietary technology, Tapad Device Graph™, was named "Best New Media Innovation" and Tapad employee Chris Martin was awarded the "Rising Star Award." The iMedia ASPY Awards – determined exclusively by agency votes – recognize the industry's top marketing technology, media companies and publishers for outstanding service to agencies. The award for "Best Customer Service" recognizes Tapad's client services team and their dedication to helping agencies fully understand their consumers' behavior and achieve the best cross-screen campaign ROI through Tapad's Campaign Pulse and TV Pulse analytics reporting. The "Best Mobile Partner" win recognizes the abilities of the Tapad Device Graph™ to deliver unified cross-screen solutions for the company's partners. "We are privileged to have a talented and dynamic group of people on our client services team, and we are honored to be recognized by iMedia Connection and our agency partners," said Tapad Founder and CEO, Are Traasdahl. "We have always strived to provide the best solutions and the best customer support, so it's extremely gratifying to be rewarded for our efforts. If our clients and partners are happy, we are happy." For more information on the iMedia ASPY Awards please visit: http://aspyawards.com. Read the full press release here. Contact us today
Cross-screen marketing tech firm, Tapad, drove unified campaign; partnered with Statiq to measure cross-screen impact on in-store visits LONDON, March 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ – Carat North completed the UK's most comprehensive digital campaign with Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian. Coupled with location-based audience data from Statiq, this marks the first time a UK-company has measured the impact of unified, cross-screen campaign on in-store visits. Carat North served display and video ads to grocery shoppers for the leading retailer ASDA from August through October. During the campaign, Tapad utilized Statiq's audience data to measure which users visited a store after being exposed* to the campaign's ad on multiple devices. The digital campaign demonstrated a lift of 59% for in-store visits when users were exposed to ads on three devices over people who were shown an ad only on onescreen. Those who engaged with the ad were also 411% more likely to visit an ASDA store. Of those who were exposed to an ad, 248% were more likely to visit a store. Impressions served to mobile devices saw the highest success rate with an in-store visit lift of 67%. The campaign leveraged Tapad's proprietary technology, The Device Graph™, which Nielsen confirmed Tapad's cross device accuracy to be 91.2%, to serve ads sequentially on connected devices belonging to the same user. CARAT NORTH: "The ability to know which devices belong to our customer, coupled with the ability to deliver the right ad, and right message, wherever they are and on whatever device they're using, has been something this industry has long needed," said Steve Thornton, Digital Account Manager, Carat North. "We're impressed with the results that have come from the work with Tapad and Statiq for this media-first, and look forward to continuing to offer these solutions to clients like ASDA. Matching unified cross-device capabilities with real insights on campaign performance is an invaluable advantage in the marketing world." TAPAD: "This campaign is a perfect example of the capabilities of cross-device advertising," said Are Traasdahl, Founder and CEO, Tapad. "In addition to reaching users across devices, we're able to analyze campaign results and determine how different combinations of ad exposure, creative type or view frequency affected their decision to visit a location." STATIQ: "As a location data specialist, Tapad is our ideal partner – they are an industry leader and by working with them we are able to determine the impact unified messaging has on real world consumer behaviours," said Dean Cussell, Co-Founder of Statiq. "We believe this type of analysis will significantly aid brands in optimising future ad spend." About Carat North Carat North is a leading independent media planning & buying specialist in digital and non-traditional media solutions. Owned by global media group Dentsu Aegis Network, the Carat network is more than 6,700 people in 130 countries worldwide across 170 cities. Carat defined the sector when established as the world's first media independent in 1968 and is now Europe's largest media network, a position held for more than 15 years. For more information visit www.carat.co.uk About Tapad Tapad Inc. is a marketing technology firm renowned for its breakthrough, unified, cross-device solutions. With 91.2% data accuracy confirmed by Nielsen, the company offers the largest in-market opportunity for marketers and technologies to address the ever-evolving reality of media consumption on smartphones, tablets, home computers and smart TVs. Deployed by agency trading desks, publishers and numerous Fortune 500 brands, Tapad provides an accurate, unified approach to connecting with consumers across screens. In 2015, Tapad began aggressively licensing its identity management solution, the Tapad Device Graph™, and swiftly became the established gold-standard throughout the ad tech ecosystem. Tapad is based in New York and has offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit,Frankfurt, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Toronto. TechCrunch called the powerhouse Tapad team "a hell of a list of entrepreneurs who created some of the most valuable online advertising companies of the last decade." Among Tapad's numerous awards: EY Entrepreneur of The Year (East Coast) 2014, among Forbes' Most Promising Companies two year's running, Deloitte's Technology Fast 500, Crain's Fast 50, Entrepreneur 360, Digiday Signal Award, iMedia ASPY Award, and a MarCom Gold Award. Read the full release here. *Tapad utilized Statiq's audience data to measure which users visited a store during, or within one month of, being exposed to the campaign's ad on multiple devices. Contact us today