How the new ‘mindset era’ will transform digital advertising

With signal loss making identity-based targeting more challenging, the smartest brands are taking a whole new path, says Peter Wallace, general manager for EMEA at GumGum.

Since the beginning of the programmatic era, audience targeting strategies have focused on segmenting users based on identity factors like age, gender, past purchases and browsing history. In a rapidly changing digital space, however, identity-based targeting is fast becoming a flawed wisdom.

Robust data privacy regulations mean targeting people based on their personal data is becoming a risky endeavor. Added to this, difficulties around third-party cookies (though Google halted its full-scale cookie deprecation earlier this year) have seriously undermined behavioral strategies. Already, 40% of the web is non-addressable via third-party cookies, and that figure will continue to grow regardless of Google’s decision.

The speed at which our digital world moves is also making identity solutions more and more ineffective. What someone browsed last week, yesterday, or even an hour ago isn’t necessarily going to be relevant to them here and now. It’s not surprising that 66% of UK and US consumers say most digital advertising they’re exposed to isn’t relevant to them.

So, the relationship between advertisers and audiences needs to change. If advertising is to achieve its primary ambition of creating the perfect match between brands and consumers, it needs to work in a privacy-first way that respects the user, while tapping into their mood and interests in the moments that really matter.

This combination of technical and legislative change is forcing a once-in-a-generation moment for brands to reimagine how they operate across digital advertising. This will ultimately benefit both consumers and, in turn, brands.

To achieve this, we need a fresh way of operating – in short, a new era for advertising. We call this the ‘mindset era’.

Embracing a new mindset

Instead of analyzing users based on ID insights and old browser data, marketers need to focus on the pivotal role of mindset in the user journey. The most potent way of doing this is by leveraging the power of the open web and next-level contextual intelligence.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of content-level data that exists in open environments, enabling us to understand more about brands and the continuously evolving mindsets of consumers. AI-powered contextual analysis is so advanced now that it can analyze all of the data signals within digital environments – including text, image, video and audio – giving it a human-like understanding of the content a user is viewing and how to serve suitable and safe ads that will resonate with their mindset.

Mindset and receptiveness to advertising aren’t just earned through aligning with relevant content, however. We need to go deeper in reading user behaviors and content context. That’s why the real potential of the mindset approach is realized in tandem with attention measurement.

If contextual targeting helps an advertiser to understand the content a user is interested in and how the creative can tap into their active mindset, attention technology allows advertisers to measure these activations in real-time, driving the best brand and business outcomes.

ID profiling doesn’t figure in this equation because it doesn’t matter where someone’s from, their age, their gender, or any other identifying factor. What matters is leveraging contextual, attention and creative intelligence, using real-time, cookie-free data signals, to establish a deep-rooted understanding of a user’s changing mindset.

The mindset approach in action

Leading advertisers are already exploring the potential of mindset-led strategies. Earlier this year, GumGum worked with iconic Italian beverage brand Martini and its media agency OMD to help deliver the Dare to Be campaign, a strategic effort to re-position the brand as a vibrant and sophisticated choice for a modern aperitivo-loving audience.

Advanced AI-based contextual targeting was deployed for the campaign to focus with a high degree of accuracy on Martini’s target audience. This was paired with high-impact, stand-out creative to grab the audience’s attention and build awareness for the brand. Attention technology was then used to measure the creative throughout the campaign and optimize delivery towards the contextual environments that delivered the highest attention time.

The combination of contextual, creative and attention delivered impressive results for Martini. It helped the brand to reclaim its rightful placement in lifestyle conversations and delivered significant increases in brand awareness and future purchase intent.

The BBC and Havas Manchester had similarly impressive results when they worked with GumGum to deploy the mindset strategy to raise awareness of the 60th anniversary of iconic sci-fi drama Doctor Who and a series of Christmas special episodes. Following the campaign, the episodes achieved a 40% increase in viewing figures over previous series. The Christmas special also became the highest-streamed show over the festive period.

Take the smartest route in

The digital ad industry is at an inflection point and brands must consider carefully which strategies will serve them best for the future. Targeting consumers based on identity falls short, not just because of the extremely fast pace of today’s digital consumers, but because of its reliance on invasive personal data being at odds with the shifting sands of data regulations.

Thankfully, brands like Martini and the BBC are discovering a powerful alternative: the mindset approach and the combination of context, creative and attention, allowing campaigns to seamlessly tap into the mood and interests of audiences in the moments that matter.

It is by far the most compelling model for the future of advertising in a cookieless world, one that will allow brands and consumers to be brought together in a way that antiquated, ID-based models were never able to do.