Programmatic buying has helped brands better reach their audiences but the persistent concern has been about ads appearing next to appropriate content.

And in 2023, there has been an extra layer added to the brand safety question: privacy-safe and cookie-free targeting methods that are still effective.

Context, attention and receptivity are some of the options brands are looking at while media companies are working to incorporate new metrics into their platforms.

Blue Ant Media recently launched contextual audience targeting across all of its free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels globally through a partnership with content data platform Iris.TV.

Mitch Dent, EVP of media solutions, consumer shows and publishing for Blue Ant Media, says contextual targeting is important for advertisers because it gives them the ability to access video-level data to better plan and execute their campaigns with content that is relevant to their audiences in the connected TV ecosystem.

Dent says contextual targeting also unlocks program-level targeting, which offers advertisers a similar experience to how they approach their linear buys.

“This is an important step as the connected TV and FAST spaces evolve, so that budgets can be used more strategically and more efficiently,” he says. “With the breadth and variety of programming available, this improves the experience for viewers by serving them brand information that is meaningful to them. It also enables brands to reach the right audiences in the most ideal environments.”

He adds that contextual targeting methods are also completely cookie-less, making it a scalable solution for brands that want to reach audiences based on interest and psychographics as cookies disappear and connected TV becomes more popular.

Montreal-based Contxtful has also been pursuing the demand for context-based advertising, but on the publisher side with its context and attention metric tool.

Receptivity for Pubishers is attention-centric and does not use any private data. The tool was first used in a test by Quebecor last year, and Contxtful since signed Rogers and MediaTonik. The company’s goal is to get most of the top 30 publishers using the tool in the next six to 12 months.

The tool is meant to give full control to the publishers. The code for the tool resides on the publisher’s site, not in the cloud, and buys are made directly, rather than programmatically. Right now, the tool operates on everything digital, but not yet with connected TV or digital radio.

Guillaume Bouchard, Contxtful’s CEO, says says the tool empowers advertisers to shift their advertising buys from open exchanges to direct purchases, which in turn benefits publishers. While there is a bonus of significantly reducing their carbon footprint by cutting down on ad waste, the big benefit is that publishers can get more revenue than they would from open programmatic, and showcase that the context their quality content is the kind of context advertisers would want to appear beside.

“We made the decision to really be the best weapon of choice for the local media to differentiate their inventory that is premium and give good reasons for agencies to buy direct and justify the cost that the local media is asking for their inventory,” Bouchard says. To that end, Receptivity for Publishers is only available to local media and is not offered to global platforms, such as YouTube and Facebook.