Reach your target audience in a cookieless world
Take control with contextual targeting to meet your unique advertiser goals, before a bid is even placed. Our predictive science pre-screens pages and categorizes them using contextual audience analysis, leveraging emotion and sentiment detection to ensure your ads align with content that is most desirable and relevant. By understanding how audiences engage with different environments, we help you reach consumers in the right context—enhancing relevance, engagement, and brand affinity.
Contextual audience analysis complements your IAS brand safety and avoidance pre-bid settings to amplify your brand message while ensuring alignment with consumer sentiment and media consumption trends. Explore how we provide unprecedented precision with our toolkit.
Contextual Targeting is key to connect with your ideal audience
With new privacy legislation and cookie deprecation, advertisers need solutions for reaching their desired audiences in suitable spaces. Our Context Control Targeting solution leverages page-level classification to curate content across more than 200 industry vertical, seasonal, topical, and audience proxy segments. Powered by the largest knowledge graph, our technology enables deeper classification of content to help advertisers tailor ad placements and access precise targeting at scale.
Unlock measurable results across the funnel with IAS targeting solutions. From amplifying conversions and reducing costs to driving exceptional engagement, our privacy-safe, cookie-free technologies empower you to activate campaigns that perform—delivering bigger impact where it matters most. Powered by advanced audience insights, dynamic optimization, and contextual intelligence, IAS ensures your ads break through the clutter to move your business forward.
+0%
Audience-enhanced targeting increased conversion rates by as much as 61%
-0%
Dynamic Performance Profiles reduced cost per conversion by 20% for advertisers by automatically optimizing toward the highest-performing, most media
+0%
Context Control Targeting achieved a 300% higher click-through rate (CTR) compared to the next best targeting strategy
Go beyond binary decision making with technology that comprehends content the way a human would, and ensure your message reaches the consumers who will connect the most with your brand.
Audience-Enhanced Targeting empowers you to connect with engaged consumers by merging real audience insights with contextual relevance. Reach high-value prospects with privacy-safe, cookieless targeting that drives stronger results across the funnel.
Context Control Targeting ensures your ads appear in the most relevant and brand-safe environments by leveraging advanced semantic intelligence. Reach your ideal audience with page-level precision and amplify your brand’s message without relying on third-party cookies.
Dynamic Performance Profiles take your campaign performance to the next level by automatically identifying and targeting your highest-converting contextual segments. Maximize ROI and streamline optimization with data-driven automation—no manual input required.
Custom Segment Editor gives you full control to craft bespoke contextual segments tailored to your specific brand goals. Quickly build, manage, and optimize custom avoidance and targeting strategies—directly within the IAS platform.
Knowing your campaign is running alongside trusted and expected content is key. Deepening our relationship with IAS to offer both contextual avoidance and targeting segments gives our advertisers more flexibility and transparency across their omnichannel buys.
– Greg MacDonald, VP, Marketplace Partnerships
Verizon Media
Get deeper insights into cutting-edge contextual targeting solutions at the IAS Insider.
Marketers know AI isn’t perfect—but they’re using it anyway. Despite the risks, AI is reshaping modern advertising and how brands compete.
CES 2026 made one thing clear: media performance is no longer separable from media quality. Media quality is the engine of growth, performance, and outcomes. That reality shaped the most important takeaways from CES 2026. Read more here.
IAS Total Visibility: The industry’s first end-to-end automated SPO solution designed to help advertisers make smarter, faster, and more effective media buying decisions that make marketers’ dollars go further.
Your success is what drives us. Our global Help Center and customer success team can quickly address any questions you have about our contextual solutions and workflows at any point.
Transparency is key to successful campaigns. Leverage these Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to find out what you need to know about contextual targeting solutions that drive results.
Contextual targeting places ads based on the content of a webpage, ensuring relevance by matching ad topics with the context of the site. IAS’s contextual targeting solutions provide unprecedented precision for targeting content to help advertisers increase recognition and engagement.
By aligning ads with contextually relevant content, contextual targeting increases engagement and reduces ad fatigue.
Examples of contextual targeting include:
- Showing an ad for kitchen appliances on a recipe website.
- Displaying ads for electric cars on webpages about environmental conservation.
- Promoting financial services on webpages with investment advice.
IAS’s contextual targeting analyzes the actual content of a webpage in near real-time rather than relying on user behavior or cookies. IAS’s solution takes into account the sentiment, emotion, and semantics of a given webpage. This privacy-first approach ensures ads align with relevant content while respecting user data privacy regulations.
Yes, IAS’s contextual solutions include advanced brand safety and suitability avoidance tools to ensure ads are placed in appropriate contexts for your brand, avoiding harmful or inappropriate content that could damage brand reputation.
Contextual targeting improves ad performance by placing ads in relevant environments, increasing engagement, and driving higher click-through rates (CTR). It also enhances user experience by delivering ads that resonate with the content being consumed.
Yes, IAS provides contextual targeting solutions across various formats, including display and video. Contextual solutions for video analyze metadata, scripts, and visual content to ensure suitable and relevant ad placements.
