What is Contextual Advertising?

What is contextual advertising? Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen. Today we're talking about contextual advertising, how it works and why it is so powerful for law firms. Today, we're going to talk about how to best leverage contextual advertising soon, but let's just go ahead and get started.

Contextual advertising, it's all about precision and it's not your typical banner ad that's plastered across random websites and it's different than the search or pay-per-click ads that we talk about so much on this podcast. Yes, you probably will still be paying for contextual advertising on a per-click or a per-impression basis, but contextual advertising is more about putting your law firm's message in front of the right eyes at the right time, even if they're not looking for you specifically. So imagine this a potential client is scrolling through an article about recent changes in, let's say, family law in their state. Maybe there's a change to the rules for custody that's going to affect them, or maybe it's an update to a child support formula or even a new family court judge being appointed or elected. This is the context part of contextual advertising. We're trying to find these users who are looking at something that can more naturally integrate our advertising, so we place our firm's ad right there, smack in the middle or at the bottom of that article, and it's not random. We're being really calculated and strategic here. Like with search ads on Google, where we have some information about the interests of the user, contextual advertising or contextual marketing is really designed to get our message to resonate with potential clients who are actively seeking legal information. It's an antidote to the traditional style of marketing where we're either waiting for someone to show interest or we're targeting based on some other data points that we have about them that are potentially a little bit creepy. And this format contextual might actually sound a little bit creepier than remarketing. But contextual advertising is so great because it's kind of like whispering advice directly into the ears of your potential clients and telling them hire me. It's all about meeting your audience where they are in their own legal journey and serving them. Advertising that fits naturally within the context of what they're already doing at that moment. But how does this actually work? What internet sorcery do we have to perform to make this happen? Well, for you, the lawyer or the marketer that's listening to this, and really for me as well, it's pretty easy to do.

Today. Native advertising isn't really a new concept and contextual advertising is essentially an offshoot of that. But the contextual advertising platforms we have access to now can use really sophisticated algorithms and now artificial intelligence to determine not only what's on the web page we're using but what's on that publisher's page that we want to advertise on, and it can use all of this information to help us put our ads in the right place at the right time. And ad exchanges and networks that offer contextual advertising they basically just decipher the context of the situation and then they place the ads that they find are best aligned with the context or the topic of the page that we're advertising on. And again, it's about being in the right place at the right time and then sending the right message.

And I could wax poetic for quite a while about how we used to do this most effectively, but the reality is you don't really need to do much these days to win with contextual advertising. The software basically does all of the heavy lifting for us and, yes, this does sound a little bit like a black box that we're hooking our credit cards up to and hoping it spits out clients, but if you're tracking your leads and your marketing and doing all the Google analytics stuff that you should be doing, then you shouldn't be afraid to give the black box a try, because the benefits can be pretty significant and, first and foremost, that black box comes with efficiency. You really are not throwing your marketing budget into that vast abyss of the internet, despite the fact that we are turning over so much control to whichever ad network we choose. In these situations, though, we're actually directing our budget with a lot more purpose than if we're running display advertising on Google, and this means more clients, better ROI. You get it, but we also really value the relevance of contextual advertising. You're not interrupting someone's online experience. You're actually enhancing it in a bunch of ways. You're giving them more and you're offering solutions. Your ad is starting to become a part of the narrative that they're already engaged in, and it provides an avenue for them to continue to the next part of that story.

Contextual advertising really helps us provide an experience that isn't just more targeted and more efficient and better for our budget, but it really is truly fully client focused. We're not just trying to be seen here. We're not just pushing ads to wherever we can. What we're doing is we are well and truly trying to deliver the right content to the right people at the moment that they need it Eg the right time. But here's the catch you probably shouldn't be doing this unless you've exhausted every other option. Contextual advertising is powerful, but it's also pretty expensive and it's pretty time-consuming to manage, even with all the stuff we have with AI. Now, if you don't already have the foundations of a seriously robust marketing program, contextual advertising is going to be a hard and expensive road for your firm. But if you want to learn more about contextual advertising, don't hesitate to reach out or wait for a future episode, because we're going to talk about it more. But for today that's it for Legal Marketing 101. Check out rosanadvertisingcom for more Thanks.