If you already have an understanding of what content is interesting to your potential customers, you can show them ads on sites that relevant to your product. One example would be placing an ad for a new sauce within a cooking video or offering ski equipment to those who view a site about sports and active holidays.

Targeting by genre and topic helps you reach an appropriate audience, even in cases where it is difficult to do so in the usual ways, i.e. using demographic, behavioral and other characteristics. These typical targeting types are not as helpful if the user or their browser deletes cookies, if the user is new and nothing is known about their interests, or when they visit pages in their browser's private or incognito mode. In such situations, it is useful to rely not on the user's characteristics, but on the subject of the content that they are viewing at a particular moment. The new targeting type makes this feasible, and in doing so, increase coverage.

How it works

Targeting by genre and subject is available in display campaigns — in banner and video ads, on web pages or video content respectively.

We use machine learning and computer vision technologies to mark up text and video content. One neural network predicts the genre and subject of the video based on the name and description, and the other - based on consecutive frames. 

The model is constantly updated with new data. On a daily basis, we analyze some of the video content in which the ad was shown using Yandex.Toloka and we evaluate whether the video categories are correctly marked. The results are then transmitted to the neural network. This helps the technology remain in a state of constant improvement and ensures high accuracy of the markup across all categories.

How to set it up

Step 1. When selecting an audience in a display campaign, set the “Genres and subjects” impression criteria. Here's how it looks in the interface:

Targeting by genre and subject works independently of impressions for user profiles — you cannot select both at the same time.

Step 2. In the list of genres and subjects, select those that are most interesting to your customers.

For example, if you advertise cosmetic products, you can add “Shopping” to the “Beauty and health” category, and select “Melodramas” in the “Movie genres” subject.

The subjects in the list overlap using the “or” operator: the more categories you choose, the more complete the reach of your target audience can be.

To evaluate the impact of an ad using the new impression criteria, use the cross-section by genre and subject in Report Wizard.

Test out these new points of contact with your audience and share your results!