A Guide to Contextual Advertising with Digital Audio

Imagine your neighbor just got home from the hospital. You decide to make your famous chili because you know for a fact they love it. And you’re low-key proud as you ask how the recovery is going with the dish in your hand.

“The doctor says I’m good, I just can’t eat meat or anything too rich for a few weeks,” they say. “Thanks for cooking. What did you bring?”

Now, you wish you had a little more context before selecting a meal for them. That’s the difference between mass advertising campaigns and contextual advertising. In the wake of privacy concerns, the concept has seen a resurgence, but it’s nothing new. The only thing that’s changed is the accessibility of the tools for brands and budgets of all sizes.

What is contextual advertising?

Contextual advertising is any ad that can be placed within the audience’s current context by aligning with the content they’re listening to, how they’re feeling, or what they may be doing. To engage in contextual advertising, advertisers simply need additional context, whether that be consumer preferences, mood, actions, location, weather, or any other user-shared feedback.

A simple example of contextual advertising would be serving patio cover ads to anyone listening to a rainy-day playlist or cowboy boots to top-40 country music listeners.

The problem with most advertising media is that brands have a matter of seconds to connect with the audience, bring them up to speed, and then try to sell them. Contextual targeting lets you skip the first two steps.

How can you use targeting to create contextually relevant digital audio campaigns?

With contextual advertising, you don’t have to spend time orienting with your audience. Your audience is already sharing listening device data, location data, and music preferences with their streaming platforms.

Think back to our rainy-day ad. By using contextual advertising tools in digital audio, you can skip past “Have you ever planned a barbecue only to get rained out? Isn’t that the worst?” by only serving ads to people listening to party playlists on connected speakers in areas with rain in the forecast. They’re already wondering if they need to make new plans.

Sure, that’s an overly specific example. But that’s the beauty of contextual advertising—you can jump deep into specific stories in seconds.

Ride the Vibe with Mood Targeting

Mood targeting is an exciting feature unique to digital audio, and specifically streaming music. Using the Music Genome Project that powers Pandora, SiriusXM Media can place ads based on mood, genre, and listener music preferences, to name a few specifics.

Not only can mood targeting help you find the right customers, but it can also help you set the right tone. It’s the advertising equivalent of riding a vibe. When you know what kind of music your audience listens to, you can place contextual ads that don’t feel out of place.

Here are a few ways you can easily match your listener’s vibe:

Match your background music to listener preferences
Lower your voice for sad acoustic music
Bring the energy when the beats start dropping

Activity Targeting Puts You in the Room

In the hay days of radio, advertisers coveted drive time because it was darn near the only time most people were listening to the same thing. Sure, advertisers could do some amount of activity targeting since everyone was stuck in traffic. But today, most of those commuters are listening to digital audio or only commuting from their home office to their kitchen.

What if you could reach your audience with messages tailored to what they’re doing? Activity targeting allows brands to craft messages for listeners who are working out, cooking, socializing, and more. Our music analysts curate stations that are aligned to activities that pair well with music. When brands advertise on these stations, their messaging can be especially relevant and more likely to raise awareness, boost consideration, and inspire purchase.

Transcription Targeting Gives You Loads of Context

Transcription targeting allows you to place ads within the context of a specific podcast episode. Millions of people listen to millions of podcasts every week, each episode as diverse as the listener. Finding the right episode and audience can feel overwhelming in those contexts, but with transcription targeting, you can save time and increase your placement accuracy.

Voice-to-text technology gives SiriusXM Media the power to create transcripts and index thousands of episodes for topic, mood, suitability, host, brand safety, and any number of other screening criteria. Transcripts also serve as an opportunity to find trends in listener behavior and other podcast communities they would have otherwise overlooked.

Get in on Digital Audio Contextual Advertising

Contextual advertising is made possible with our leading adtech targeting capabilities. And our mood and activity targeting across our streaming platforms and transcription targeting across our podcast network, are just scratching the surface of how brands can make sure their messaging lands every time.

Are you ready to find the right audience in the right place at just the right time? Let’s talk.