The reality is that we have had some time already to prepare for this change, and luckily COVID-19 has pushed away this transition a bit. But the main issue is that we don’t know what the world is going to look like when these changes do happen in 2021. It’s key to look at how the technology providers will integrate new approaches, but there is still mass uncertainty around what that will look like.
This means flexibility is vital. We now need to be very attentive, see what is actually happening and where it’s happening. From there we can take advantage of this opportunity quickly, which will drive innovation for the next year.
One exciting development over the last year, for example, was New York Times offering a different type of contextual targeting than we were used to. It started targeting readers with emotion-based targeting, which was appealing to advertisers looking for better ways to target readers.
Labeled ‘Project Feels’, it is a product that matches ads to people based on emotion, which The New York Times knew it had a big space to exploit because of the breadth and depth of its content. Users lingering on a certain categorised emotion of a story, such as ‘confident’, ‘inspiring’, ‘sadness’ or ‘hate’ would then be matched up with an advertisement that fit into those categories.

The New York Times is using this new technology to push the envelope and extend the definition of contextual targeting. It is trailblazing to target attributes that have never before been possible; emotions, controversy and social engagement.
Now with proper storytelling we can target users based around emotions and feelings, such as a live sports event or concert, and see whether these particular pieces of content make people more enthusiastic about the future, or more careful.
Looking forward, we know users are less likely to click on ads that don’t make sense or don’t mean anything to them. This means the behaviour of the user on publisher sites is going to be much more of a focus in future. This includes how fast users are reading articles and dwell time on certain sites, as this shows a level of engagement marketers will now be looking for.
This new type of targeting based on behaviour that happened immediately before the ad is served is going to be fascinating to watch.
Cookies might have provided a scattergun approach to targeting audiences, but now we look forward to a different future. One where marketers and brands will need to work harder to know their users personally, and to find out what type of engagement works best through testing this new landscape.