Smarter Media Buying Using Sentiment Analysis and Audience Intent Data
Media buying has gotten significantly more complicated due to increasing channels, content variety, audience segmentation, and platform regulations.
Ensuring that your brand's content, whether ads, sponsored content, or other paid opportunities are on the kind of pages that you want your brand associated with is a job for artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning.
Why Machine Learning Is Ideal for Media Planning
Machine learning supports several aspects of marketing and advertising, including:
- Media placement analysis
- Sentiment tracking
- Audience intent data
- Influencer identification
- Topic and trend analysis
- Content moderation in market
Challenges With Traditional Media Placement
When it comes to media placement, there are typically a few scenarios:
- You're on social channels. You need to know everything about your audience to build a segment on your own and it will live on the platform that you've chosen... i.e. LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok. There are going to be comments, engagements, and posts on pages that will change regularly, and in some cases you'll need to know what's happening ASAP if it's a problematic topic, threat, or other brand no-no.
- You're using programmatic. Your buy will be a bit of a black hole, you may not know where it will be placed because you've used a platform that buys media as it becomes available. You will be relying on "safety segments" to prevent your content from being displayed alongside "trouble topics" like terrorism, illegal drugs, etc. Most of the time you'll need to specify these and the segments still are imperfect. They don't catch everything and they incorrectly categorize perfectly good placement options too.
- Native Advertising. Taboola, Outbrain, etc. Here you're buying content placements but still not able to see when your content is placed on pages that aren't inline with your audience targets.
- You're working with the publisher. You buy directly from a publisher and likely pay an increased price and will need to specify exactly the types of content you do and do not want to be included alongside, or you will be placed at their whim.
All of these scenarios have their pros and cons, any many brands use a blend of these options. There's no wrong choice for media buying, but they all have different ways that you'll need to monitor how your brand is being displayed.
How Machine Learning Enhances Media Buying
Machine learning platforms, like Redflag AI, have the ability to analyze millions of pages and posts across websites and social media channels every day. Typically a job done by a human, the manual process of checking media placements has only been able to scratch the surface.
In fact, it's estimated that only 2% of media placements are checked for content and brand safety, let alone alignment with brand standards, sentiment, or audience intent.
Machine learning has another benefit when it comes to analyzing where your paid content lives - artificial intelligence can sift through ALL types of content, including:
- Text
- Image
- Video
- Audio
That means you can understand video content from the standpoint of the images and the audio that are playing alongside your brand.
What type of sentiment can you track? Well, artificial intelligence has allowed us to move FAR beyond "positive" and "negative" - now you can track sentiment for at least 20 different emotional states of your audience, including:
- Acceptance
- Annoyance
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Calmness
- Contentment
- Disgust
- Dislike
- Eagerness
- Fear
- Joy
- Melancholy
- Pleasantness
- Responsiveness
- Sadness
- Serenity
The Role of Influencers in Paid Media
Sometimes the paid situation includes influencer strategies. You're watching what they're posting for your brand, but are you keeping an eye on every post they make to ensure they're still the best match for your brand?
With sentiment and intent analysis through machine learning techniques, you can easily analyze all of their posts and spot when they start to have content that may create a negative impact on your engagement.
No matter what your media strategy is, it's important to enrich your data with the most accurate and actionable information so you can keep your acquisition costs low and your conversion rates high.
If you're interested in learning more about Redflag AI, contact us here to chat.
