I was in a meeting when Apple dropped the ATT bombshell.
April 2021. We were running $3 million a month in mobile user acquisition, heavily dependent on device-level targeting and attribution. Within hours, our performance forecasts were worthless. Within weeks, CPAs had doubled on iOS. Within months, entire targeting strategies we'd relied on for years were obsolete.
While competitors scrambled to figure out how to recover behavioral targeting, we made a different bet. We went all-in on contextual.
Two years later, I can tell you: it wasn't just a workaround. It was an upgrade.
The Shift That Changed Everything
Contextual targeting matches ads to the environment where they appear, not the individual viewing them. Your fitness app ad shows up in a health article—not because we know this specific user searches for fitness content, but because we know this specific content is about fitness.
The distinction seems subtle. The implications are massive.
The Core Difference
- Behavioral targeting: "This person has been searching for running shoes for two weeks"
- Contextual targeting: "This person is currently reading an article about marathon training"
- The key: Contextual doesn't require knowing who the person is—only what they're engaging with right now
Why This Matters Now
Contextual targeting requires zero user-level data. It's fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, ATT, and whatever privacy regulations come next. It works exactly the same whether users opt in or out of tracking. In a world where tracking is dying, contextual is thriving.
Why Privacy Killed Our Old Playbook
The forces stacking against behavioral targeting aren't going away. They're accelerating.
- Privacy regulations: GDPR and CCPA made user tracking legally complicated across half the world
- Platform changes: Apple ATT gutted iOS targeting. Google's Privacy Sandbox is doing the same on Android
- Cookie deprecation: Third-party cookies are finally dying after years of false starts
- Consumer preference: Users actively choose not to be tracked when given the option
We spent years building sophisticated behavioral targeting capabilities. The industry invested billions. And then the foundation shifted beneath us.
But here's what I didn't expect: contextual targeting, done well, often outperforms behavioral anyway.
The Signals We Use Now
Mobile contextual targeting is richer than most advertisers realize. Here's what we layer:
App-Level Signals
- App category: Games, news, fitness, shopping—the broad context of the environment
- App store metadata: What the app describes itself as, its keywords, its positioning
- Quality signals: App ratings indicate environment quality
- Content ratings: Age appropriateness helps brand safety and audience fit
Content-Level Signals
- Page/screen content: What topic is the user actually engaging with right now?
- Sentiment: Is this positive content? Negative? Neutral? Matters for brand alignment
- Keywords: Specific terms appearing in the content
- User action: Are they reading? Playing? Shopping? The action context matters
Strategies That Actually Work
Category Alignment
The simplest contextual play is matching your app to relevant environments:
- Fitness app → Health and fitness apps and content
- Recipe app → Food and cooking environments
- Investment app → Finance and business content
Obvious? Yes. But you'd be surprised how many advertisers don't start here.
Content Theme Targeting
Go deeper by targeting specific content themes within broader categories:
- Travel booking app → Travel articles in news apps (reaching intent without needing to track it)
- Sports betting app → Live sports content (capturing the moment of engagement)
- Cooking app → Recipe content wherever it appears (following the content, not the user)
"I used to think contextual was a poor substitute for behavioral targeting. Now I realize I had it backwards. When your ad appears next to content the user actively chose to consume, you're meeting them at the moment of relevance—not stalking them across the internet based on something they searched last week."
The Hybrid Approach
We don't run pure contextual. We combine it with first-party data for maximum effect:
- Contextual for prospecting: Find new users based on content affinity
- First-party data for personalization: Layer your own customer data where available
- Exclude existing customers: Don't waste contextual impressions on people who've already converted
- Apply learnings cross-strategy: What you learn from first-party informs contextual targeting
Privacy-Safe Targeting
ClicksFlyer offers advanced contextual targeting options that deliver performance without compromising user privacy—because the future belongs to advertisers who don't depend on tracking.
Learn MoreProving It Works
Skeptics ask: can contextual really compete with behavioral? Here's how we answer:
- A/B test head-to-head: Run contextual against behavioral where both are available. You might be surprised.
- Compare by context category: Some contexts outperform dramatically. Find them.
- Measure brand lift: Contextual often wins on brand metrics because of content alignment
- Track conversion quality: Not just volume—are contextual users better long-term?
When ATT hit, we didn't just survive. We learned that contextual targeting—understanding where your ad appears rather than who sees it—is often a better proxy for intent than behavioral profiles built on stale data anyway.
The privacy era isn't a problem to solve. It's an opportunity to build advertising that respects users and still delivers results. Contextual is how we get there.