Serving ads out of context one way to drive up conversions, study shows

Marketers plotting where to put their online ad dollars for Q4–and beyond–might consider cranking into their plans findings from a study by online advertising network BlueLithium. The study found that behaviorally-targeted online advertising generally got higher conversions when served out of context than in context.

For instance, users whose online behavior characterized them as “travelers” showed highest conversion rate when served ads not on travel sites, but on career sites. Users whose behavior characterized them as “shoppers” showed highest conversions on female-oriented content sites.

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BlueLithium’s data were drawn from the behavior of users, tracked by unique cookies, as they interacted with ads and sites across the network. Its research division, BL Labs, analyzed more than 400 million online ad impressions across multiple sites, evaluating both click-through and conversion rates across several pre-determined behavioral and contextual categories. It also analyzed nine behavioral categories containing more than 10 million impressions for patterns across contextual categories.

Analysts discovered that ads showing the same context as an identified behavior had a higher click-through rate in seven of the nine categories. But ads shown in a different context had a higher conversion rate in five of the categories. “The merchants we drive volume for, for the most part, care about conversions,” says Dave Zinman, senior vice president of products, BlueLithium.

The findings support those of an earlier study by Next Century Media and Tacoda. Blue Lithium’s study concludes that the data show advertisers looking to maximize behaviorally-targeted campaigns shouldn’t rely solely on pre-packaged audience segments and rules-based targeting, but also on custom segmentation and human analysis.

The findings represent potentially critical information for merchants paying for advertising on any kind of cost per click basis, adds Dakota Sullivan, CMO, BlueLithium. “What this means for merchants is that there is now a way for them to predictively pay less for traffic and get higher conversion rates. For e-retailers or multi-channel merchants, this could have an impact on their bottom line this holiday season.”