The deprecation of the cookie is signaling the end of an era for our industry and giving us an exciting opportunity to enter a new one – where we put the mindset of our consumers at the forefront of our advertising efforts. By placing effective creative within relevant content that is aligned to what a person cares about, we can make meaningful impact on our consumers.
I was recently at IAB Annual Leadership Meeting to lead GumGum’s session, “Mindful Moments: Aligning Creative Strategy with Audience Mindset,” that laid down the groundwork for successful, mindset-based advertising in 2024 and beyond.
If you got the chance to catch our town hall session or missed it, here are my top three takeaways:
We Can Only Inspire Consumers in the Right Mindset
Advertisers today leverage personal, often invasive data on all of us to serve up ad campaigns but fail to really connect with us in the moment. How many times have you been bombarded with ads across your digital screens that are the right brand or maybe a product of interest, but you aren’t in the right moment to want to pay attention? A Redpoint Global poll, for example, found that despite data-driven methods, 70% of people receive completely irrelevant ads at least once a month.
Mindfulness is a necessity for being effective. We must take into account the content of an environment, the channels, the frequency, and the creative that shapes an ad for it to resonate meaningfully and at the right moment with a consumer to drive impact. In our industry, mindfulness isn’t just a buzzword — it’s fundamental. It’s a necessity for staying ahead and being effective.
Contextual Advertising is Prime for Our New Normal
The loss of cookies does not mean the loss of relevance - this is where contextual technology shines! It makes it possible to align ads with the content people intentionally engage with. We can present an ad that matches what someone is interested in at that moment rather than something irrelevant like the shoes they bought last week. This is how advertising should work.
Contextual advertising isn’t a trend. It’s a great equalizer in this new normal we’re facing. At its core, it’s all about making mindful moments possible. Its promise is aligning ads with context – the content surrounding them based on the content of a webpage or a video and the user’s mindset. It respects user privacy while still delivering on targeting, making it a powerful solution in our new, privacy-focused landscape.
At GumGum, our AI-powered contextual tech, Verity™, isn't a legacy contextual platform. It’s not keyword-based — instead, it combines computer vision and natural language processing to crunch all available data signals within a digital environment. We analyze text, images, audio, and video to gain a holistic, human-like understanding of web, mobile, or CTV content. This ensures brands limit waste and delivers mindful moments with ads that matter.
Our approach is third-party validated by the MRC. We were the first ad tech platform to receive content-level accreditation for contextual analysis across CTV, desktop, and mobile web.
As we embrace this new era of digital advertising, it's clear that the mindful application of contextual technology isn’t just an option but a necessity. It represents a significant shift in how we connect with our audience — not through intrusive tracking, but by intelligently aligning with their interests and current mindset. What we're witnessing isn’t just a change but a revolution in advertising, driven by respect for privacy and a deep understanding of consumer behavior.
It’s All About Creating Mindful Moments
As we continue to innovate and adapt, the future of advertising is about engaging the right minds. Advancements in AI technology can do more than just place ads where they're relevant. They can see which ads work best in each context and empower us to build ad creative that captures attention tailored to a consumer’s mindset. And by aligning with mindset, we can transform ads into mindful moments.
GumGum has recently introduced an exciting new framework, The Mindset Platform™, a powerful new data insight poised to redefine how brands gauge audience engagement within specific content.
The Mindset Platform™ will fundamentally change how brands advertise going forward. With a mindset-first approach brands can pinpoint specific moments that drive optimal attention and use it to inform ad creative – saving time, resources and delivering effective ad campaigns that drive outcomes and ROI. Humans are extremely complex and their interests vary minute to minute, The Mindset Platform™ allows advertisers to keep up with the consumer and be in the moments that matter most.
Takeaways
We are entering a new era of advertising, with the opportunity to make it a more valued part of consumers' lives. It starts with tuning into their changing moods and mindsets, and AI-powered contextual technology is the most advanced solution to do this. These innovations allow us to align closely with consumer interests, elevating our advertising to be more impactful and meaningful. Together, let's drive this change, shaping a future where advertising is not just noticed but valued for its relevance and connection.
