Integral Ad Science (Nasdaq: IAS), a global leader in digital media quality, and Matterkind Singapore, IPG’s addressable activation partner, today announced a case study on how they improved campaign performance and drove demand for an international school by using IAS’s Context Control. 

Matterkind Singapore works closely with a well-known international school in Singapore to drive enrolment by targeting international workers and expats to sign-up for open houses. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the school had to shift its focus to purely digital activations, including making its open houses virtual. Matterkind Singapore was tasked with driving awareness and quality traffic to the virtual open houses.

To address this challenge, Matterkind Singapore aimed to not only deliver quality leads but also help the advertiser future-proof its digital strategy by using cookieless targeting solutions and activating contextual strategies. Matterkind Singapore activated IAS’s Context Control Targeting as part of a robust test-and-learn framework that compared results objectively across the audience and contextual solutions.

IAS’s Context Control Targeting enabled Matterkind Singapore to target contextually relevant content without the use of third-party cookies. This helped increase the advertiser’s awareness and consideration through:

• Accurate classification at scale of content using best-in-class semantic intelligence
• Deeper classification of content through sentiment and emotion detection
• Key Audience Proxy Segments of Starting a Family and Back to School- Elementary and High School

As a result, Matterkind Singapore found that by using IAS's Context Control, they achieved stronger key metrics including:

• 68% increase on click-through rate (CTR) with IAS Context Control Targeting compared to audience targeting
• 43% decrease in cost per click (CPC) with IAS Context Control Targeting compared to audience targeting

Lani Jamieson, head of client solutions, Matterkind APAC said, “Our addressable approach at Matterkind Singapore thrives on innovation, and we continually seek ways to drive greater efficiencies and test the latest advancements in ad tech, which is especially important as we navigate changes within the wider ecosystem and prepare for a cookieless future. IAS’s Context Control solution is a great example of putting this into practice, resulting in improved performance on behalf of our brands and a tried and tested strategy to future proof our targeting capabilities.”

Laura Quigley, SVP APAC, at IAS said, ”Context Control helps the industry prepare for the deprecation of cookies with advanced contextual targeting today. These campaign results highlight how contextual targeting can help drive greater performance and more efficiency. In fact, our recent Power of Context research also showcases that contextual advertising drives stronger recall, favourability, and ultimately a positive user experience.”

Contextual targeting represents a major opportunity for brands in 2021 and beyond, so understanding how context influences consumers’ perception of ads is critical to capture long-term interest. For marketers, this is essential to stand out within increasingly crowded marketplaces and drive action as a result of ads.