The new gen AI tool is an evolution of traditional category-based targeting methods. For instance, finance investment brands like Robinhood and Fidelity Investments would likely target similar audience segments interested in trading, typically found next to business content. BrandMatch gets more granular with audience interests.
“When you add the brief into BrandMatch, the articles it suggests go beyond traditional business alignments, into culture, entertainment and sports, and find audiences receptive to that message,” said Robins.
More granular targeting
Paramount+ was a launch partner for BrandMatch, using the tool to promote the final season of its show, Evil. The goal was to reach two distinct audiences—fans who had already watched previous seasons of Evil, and people who hadn’t seen the show but were fans of supernatural.
Traditional audience targeting couldn’t achieve this level of nuance, leaving Paramount+ to use similar targeting criteria for both groups, according to Mohit Lohia, senior vice president and head of digital advertising at the Times.
However, using BrandMatch, Paramount+ submitted two separate briefs to describe the differences between the audiences. One brief detailed why Evil fans like the show, and the other described the preferences of supernatural genre fans.
BrandMatch found articles likely to resonate with each audience and modeled two audience segments based on the readers of those articles. Lohia wouldn’t share article specifics.
The campaign achieved a CTR over 20% higher than similar entertainment ads. One of the highest CTRs was within the first-party audience segment defined as “Entertainment Subscribers.” Brand lift showed a positive trend, with more than a 2.2% increase in preference.
More specifically, the existing Evil audience outperformed CTR benchmarks by more than 35%, the publisher said. The Times saw peaks in CTRs driven by audiences defined as in the market for “Movie Theater Tickets” and “Entertainment Subscribers.” One of the top content environments for Evil fans was articles tagged with the emotion “Adventurous,” the publisher said.
A higher adjacency score indicates a match
BrandMatch uses an adjacency score to analyze the advertiser’s brief and identify the most relevant content, said Lohia. A higher adjacency score indicates a closer alignment between the article and the brand’s messaging.
Once it identifies the content most aligned with the brief, the publisher determines the most engaged audience within that content, said Lohia, but the company wouldn’t go into specifics on how it defines its audience.
The first campaigns using BrandMatch targeting should be live in the second half of September. The Times plans to make the tool available for purchase to more clients in the fourth quarter of this year, offering it as part of its suite of ad solutions.