It’s that magical time of year, where I spend hours unravelling what appears to be a million Christmas lights, buying an 8ft tree that is far too big for my house (because my kids bribed me), while debating with my wife over which color of lights to hang (who knew colour schemes were so important?!). You’ve guessed it, the festive holiday period is here. And while many of us shout at our Alexa to play Mariah Carey just one last time, brands and agencies are working tirelessly to think of ways to engage with audiences, to stay front and center with their customers’ minds.

This year, it’s all about putting the consumer first. For many across the globe, the on-going cost-of-living crisis is only getting more prevalent, and with the pressures of spending habits surrounding Hanukkah and Christmas, brands have a responsibility to help consumers feel in control.

Even with these current real-world challenges, physical and online sales are expected to rise. According to Deloitte’s annual holiday forecast, annual sales are set to increase by 4-6%, creating a huge opportunity for brands to tap into.

‘Tis the season for contextual. (Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la)

Contextual targeting will be a key component for many advertisers this season. It allows them to capture the attention of consumers in the perfect mindset, whilst delivering engaging and creative messaging, versus bombarding them with irrelevant, intrusive ads.

And, our contextual targeting and insights platform, 4D, will be the chosen solution for many this season, due to our incredibly unique and advanced features.

So, through some questionable contextually influenced Christmas song lyrics, let me show you how 4D can help you step into the festive period with confidence.

1. “It’ll be lonely this Christmas, without contextual to hold”

Contextual targeting doesn’t focus on an individual. Instead, it targets groups of people because, well, who wants to be alone this Christmas? Groups, or consumers, should have specific themes. Think about starting with themes that are relevant to the product or service that are being promoted. This endemic content is a great place to start with targeting, capturing consumers on pertinent content online with which they are engaging. If you have a strong and well-established or well-recognized brand, consider including branded keywords to help comprise keyword-targeted contextual segments.

2. “You’re making a list, you’re checking it twice, consumers will find out who’s been naughty or nice”

When it comes to building your targeting, you are realistically looking for a healthy combination of Topics, which can provide scale and awareness for your campaign, with Keywords, to help provide targeting accuracy and precision. 4D’s proprietary semantic search model technology will identify the true target of your contextual segment to reach consumers out in the ecosystem. Thus, avoid repeating keywords and use keywords that are tightly related to the theme of the segment. Utilize the 4D Page Analyzer Tool for help in researching viable keywords to include.

3. “All I Want for Christmas Is You(Tube)”

Expand your targeting beyond traditional display contextual to include video targeting or tapping into our latest release, YouTube. Create a targeting strategy utilizing Topics and Brand presence to complete a retention or conquesting strategy tied to video assets. Easily activate YouTube by uploading a list of video IDs that are carefully identified via 4D proprietary video contextualizing technology. Go beyond simply channel targeting to expand your accurate reach at the individual video level.

4. “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you optimized and changed it anyway”

Given how short the holiday season is, and how fast things can change, it is so important to utilize the 4D tag that can be deployed across a campaign to generate real-time insights that can help optimize your campaign while in flight. Via the tag, you will not only learn about the contextual genome of your segments, but you can add and remove keywords or topics that are either driving performance up or down to impact the outcome of your campaign to ensure the best results.

Hopefully, I did not ruin your favorite festive songs in trying to deliver some helpful tips for contextual advertising. However, if I managed to capture your attention, don’t hesitate to contact our amazing Account Management team to find out how you can utilize 4D to support your holiday season activations.

Access our Christmas and Hanukkah Seasonal One-Pager to the right of this article!