With online publishers continuing to struggle with monetization, and privacy matters garnering increased scrutiny at the federal level, many companies are searching for innovative alternatives to traditional targeting technologies. The industry needs an ad-targeting solution that can be un-intrusive while still delivering scale--and this is where semantic targeting comes in to play. 

Semantic technology helps premium publishers, ad networks and exchanges boost ROI by improving the accuracy of the ads: It understands the meaning and sentiment of content at the URL level, matching the most appropriate and relevant ads to that content. 

Beyond behavioral or contextual

Perhaps most importantly, semantic technology avoids many of the pitfalls of more traditional technologies, like contextual and behavioral. Peer39’s technology, for example, does not target based on cookies, so there are no privacy issues. Meanwhile, semantic technology can understand strings of text and the associations between them--not simply a keyword here and there. (Thus, semantics have the ability to tell the difference between content about Amazon.com and the Amazon rainforest, and target ads accordingly).

But semantic targeters still have to allow brands to protect themselves. The technology can be set to automatically recognize general terms that are undesirable, such as profanity and sexual language; tools can also detect phrases in text associated with negative events, such as disasters and crime, which may reflect poorly on a brand. 

For example, semantic targeting avoids placing a golf-related ad next to content about Tiger Woods’ latest mistress, because it understands that the true context of the page is not about golf.  Upon detecting incongruous context, good semantic technology automatically engages preset functions to replace an ad.  The space can be left blank, filled with a public service announcement or in-house ad, or sent to an ad network.

Solutions like Peer39's SemanticProtect offer publishers and advertisers these options, and semantic targeting will continue to gain popularity as other service providers begin to do the same.