The name may sound more like a dating app, but Media24’s newest innovation focuses on connecting customers and advertisers, not couples. 

Match24, an AI-driven tool that integrates advertising with relevant content, is designed to target “the right person at the right time with the right message,” Craig Nicholson, digital sales director for Media24, told attendees at the recent INMA Africa Media Revenue Summit. “Basically, we want to revolutionise digital advertising and move from interruption to invitation.”

Digital advertising spend continues growing and is overtaking TV spend, with about six billion ad impressions available every month to brands in South Africa.

“It’s an exorbitantly large figure of available opportunities for brands to communicate with consumers,” Nicholson said. “So how do you stand out in that environment?”

For Media24, it meant developing Match24 to offer contextual advertising, which he explained “delivers true personalisation without cookies.”

It’s a smarter, more privacy-friendly way to reach a target market and ensures advertisers are reaching users as they engage with content.

How it works

Contextual advertising, Nicholson said, “… represents a fundamental shift in how we think about digital advertising.” It focuses on what the consumer is engaging with at the moment and is a breakthrough that would not have been possible without AI.

“AI technology analyses the Web page content in real time,” he said, allowing ad placement next to news articles “that have the right relevance and contextual fit with the brand you’re trying to advertise at the time.”  

Although the use of keywords is nothing new, AI allows for targeting a greater breadth of topics — and with greater precision:

“The AI is so smart that it can understand the context of the article. It knows, for example, that this article is talking about a luxury car versus an SUV. So it is able to ensure that the right ad will have the exact right contextual fit within that environment.”

Advertising can take different forms, from traditional display ads to streaming video placed in front of users “at the perfect moment, right when they’re engaging with content relevant to the product or service being advertised.”

And the data shows that makes a difference; whilst the average ad view on social media is a mere 1.5 seconds, in this contextual environment, that number jumps to 12 seconds.

“That’s a massive difference,” Nicholson said.

The real difference between the old way and this new tactic is immediacy, he said: “Contextual targeting operates in a live environment — what people are doing right now.”

Contextual targeting in action

Nicholson shared an example of a recent campaign for Mitsubishi, which appeared in the Motoring section of News24 alongside a story about Hyundai’s new SUV with off-road capabilities.

“By targeting various keywords such as SUV, seven-seater, road trips, weekend getaways, and the like, we’ve been able to ensure that the ads are ingested next to this piece of content as somebody is reading it,” he said.

“Mitsubishi has done a great job here. Not only have they made sure that the ads are in the right place at the right time, but they’re strong to call to action on their ads as well with an offer that’s right there.

There are endless ways this can be applied to other advertisers and industries, he said.

“It allows us to place and drop the ad into an exact environment,” Nicholson said. “In short: no cookies, no tracking — just smart and effective advertising right now.” 

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