Contextually Relevant Mobile Ads see impressive Clickthrough Rates.

Contextual advertising has long been a staple of many media plans for brand marketers looking to approximate their target audience through aligning their ads with relevant site content.

But beyond improved brand association, maintaining contextual relevancy can greatly improve ad performance. According to content technology specialist Kontera, contextual online display ads saw a clickthrough rate 0.05 percentage points higher than the industry average for US Google display ads.

The company analyzed more than 40 million impressions served in November 2011. Kontera considered both static ads aligned with content through standard topic match as well as dynamic-creative ads designed to match the appropriate ad to the appropriate content.

The ability to align ad creative with site content undoubtedly creates a more cohesive user experience and helps brands more closely approximate users who may be in-market for related products and services.

When this type of advertising experience is coupled with an advertising channel that naturally attracts in-market consumers—mobile, for example—the results are even better. Kontera found the clickthrough rate for editorially aligned mobile ads served to a US-based audience was five times higher than Jumptap MobileSTAT’s average clickthrough rate of 0.65%.

For now, keyword or contextual targeting remains one of the leading mobile ad targeting tactics for advertisers and agencies in North America, according to Jumptap and DIGIDAY.

As mobile continues to mature and the industry gets better at leveraging behavioral or geolocal data, it will be interesting to see how advertisers evolve their mobile ad targeting tactics. Also worth watching is overall consumer interest in and engagement with mobile ads as they become more accustomed to these forms of advertisements.

For more information at http://www.emarketer.com