Despite the focus on obtaining, maintaining, updating and leveraging personal data when it comes to tailoring ads to individual consumers today, this may be a passing trend. William Merchan, head of verity, GumGum, discusses why personal data may not be the cornerstone in the future of digital ads.
This is not a trick question: What’s the goal of advertising? Ask ten marketers this question, and you’ll get 20 different answers. That’s because we’ve built an incredibly complicated industrial complex in digital advertising to achieve one primary goal: Deliver relevant and engaging ads that capture people’s attention and inspire them to take action.
 It’s that simple, and yet we use a vast, complicated, and opaque machinery of audience targeting to track people all over the internet.
But here’s a radical idea: Relevant ads that engage and inspire action don’t require a whole industry of audience targeting. Brands don’t need to know everything about you – or really anything about you – to deliver relevant and engaging ads. Let me explain.
Most media buying is based on reach and frequency. Whether target audience rating points on TV or digital video or circulation and readership metrics on magazines, all of that is reach and frequency. The whole trillion-dollar media industry currently works on the notion of reach and frequency: How many times was my ad served? But it doesn’t matter how many times an ad was served. What matters is how long people look at those ads and if they take action.
See More: How Brands Can Keep Pace With Third-Party Data Changes
Beyond Impressions and Clicks
Instead of measuring impressions and clicks, technology is already intelligent enough to understand the context of a digital environment truly. This is not just scanning for keywords; it truly understands all the signals in a domain: words, video, audio, metadata and more (the full context) — and pairing that with dynamic and engaging ad creative. Making those work together can change the face of digital advertising and make it something that people find useful. And we can do it without constantly wondering whether we’ve crossed the line on peoples’ personal data. You’re giving people the power to tell you what they are interested in at that very moment and delivering an ad that aligns with their specific interest or need.
 Contextual has always been one of the strategies available to marketers. The next generation of contextual is proving that it can be even more accurate and effective than audience-targeting.
 There are two innovations in contextual advertising that are driving this shift:Â
- Better analysis of content: Genuinely understanding the context of an environment requires going beyond keywords — it requires deep analysis of words, images, video, audio and other available metadata. AI, natural language processing and image recognition can understand all these signals and how they work together in the environment.
- Real-time attention signals and metrics: Attention metrics are available on every impression and highly correlate with ad effectiveness.
Measuring Campaign SuccessÂ
Context is just one part of it. We also need to rethink how we measure digital advertising and campaign success. Is it just how many people clicked on a link? We should aim higher.
 We all know the digital ad noise out there is high so delivering a viewable ad isn’t a good indicator if the ad is effective. Now we need to understand how to grab attention. We have the tools to measure attention and learn what makes people take notice and what compels them to take action.
Advanced contextual solutions identify what the content is truly about. Advanced attention solutions validate whether the ad creative is resonating or not in that environment (by way of increased/decreased attention). And then, real-time optimization engines programmatically deliver the campaign accordingly.
The Mindset Matrix
Context, creativity, and attention combined are what I call the Mindset Matrix. These three things working in tandem allow advertisers to captivate a person’s mindset in current and emerging digital environments — without using any personally identifiable information (or PII in the lingo).
 The Mindset Matrix framework changes and improves the dynamic for everyone and the future of digital advertising. People get relevant ads that they welcome and engage with. Advertisers deliver engaging and relevant ads that don’t need personal data and are still just as effective and boost trust and brand favorability.
 And publishers can go back to creating engaging content and covering critical news stories without the fear that technology advertisers are using will over-block content (like anything that just mentions the word pandemic, for example) and leave valuable ad dollars on the table. That last piece is critical.
See More: Building Trust 101: Why a Modern Approach to Data Protection Is Key
How Will the Cookies Crumble?
Publishers and media owners on the open web are already facing the impending loss of third-party cookies, which will foil targeting and potentially slash more than 50% of their inventory’s value. On mobile, Apple’s iOS updates have effectively eliminated targeting based on mobile ad IDs (MAIDS), causing comparable declines in inventory value.
 Meanwhile, the walled gardens continue to strengthen their barriers and command ever greater shares of every incremental dollar spent on digital. The entire business model for open-web publishing is in jeopardy.
 Not every publisher can make the pivot into subscriptions, and fewer still can seek out the cozy confines of an owner that will allow them to operate at a loss. They need to be (and should be!) revenue-generating businesses. To do so, they must forge a new path and a new model for profitable publishing that can be sustained in a future without cookies.
 The viability of independent media depends on it.
 As an industry, we can do so much better. We have some of the most innovative and intelligent people in the world working on technologies and solutions limited only by our imagination.
It’s time to make digital advertising something people find fun and useful again.
What’s your take on the dependence on personal information in digital advertisement? Share with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!