Contextual keyword targeting

You can use contextual keyword targeting (CKT) in Campaign Manager 360 that helps match your ads to relevant website, video metadata or app content. This helps you target content relevant to your brand, product, or service.

Campaign Manager 360 uses Google search technology to analyze webpage text, app store descriptions, and video metadata. This analysis helps you target content that aligns with your brand, product, or service. Campaign Manager 360 continually crawls pages, app store descriptions, and video metadata to stay up-to-date with content changes.

Contextual keyword targeting differs from publisher-provided keyword targeting in Campaign Manager 360. Publisher-provided keyword targeting uses publisher-inserted keywords in tags, while contextual targeting matches ads to relevant website, video, or app content.

On this page

• How contextual keyword targeting works in Campaign Manager 360
• Creating effective contextual keywords
• Use contextual keyword targeting
• Limitations

How contextual keyword targeting works

Contextual keyword targeting

When you target contextual keywords, your ads serve on content that matches your specified terms. You can enter a contextual keyword or a list of contextual keywords to include in a free-form field.

• Campaign Manager 360 applies "or" logic. This means your ad will serve if any of your entered contextual keyword phrases match the page's content.
• You can use more than one word as a "contextual keyword phrase." Campaign Manager 360 will target if the phrase's semantic meaning aligns with the publisher's document, within your contextual keyword phrase.
• Contextual keyword targeting automatically expands to include the plural, canonical, and synonym forms of your contextual keywords to improve coverage and minimize missing inventory matches.
  • Plural: For example, "strawberry" includes "strawberries".
  • Canonical (same semantic meaning): For example, "travel London" could include "travel in London" and "London travel".
  • Synonym: For example, "happy" might include "content".

Creating effective contextual keywords

You can use the following table to summarize considerations when creating effective contextual keywords for contextual keyword targeting in Campaign Manager 360:

Consideration	Contextual keyword targeting
Pluralization	Plural versions of your contextual keywords are automatically targeted. For example, targeting “ski hat” automatically targets “ski hats”.
Canonicalization	Canonicalized versions of your contextual keywords are automatically targeted. For example, targeting “ski hat” automatically targets “hat ski”.
Synonyms	Synonyms related to your contextual keywords are automatically targeted. For example, targeting “ice cream” would automatically target “sorbet”.
Misspellings	May include misspellings, singular or plural forms, stemmings (for example, floor and flooring), abbreviations, or accents.
Special symbols	The following symbols aren’t accepted: , . ! @ % ^ () = {} ; ~ ` <> ? \ \

Use contextual keyword targeting

You can use a single term or a phrase as a single contextual keyword entry for Contextual Keyword targeting at the ad level in Campaign Manager 360.

Target contextual keywords at the ad level:

Users can set ad-level targeting and assign a specific creative to the ad. This helps you activate a creative personalization strategy by assigning multiple ads to a placement.

Use the Contextual keywords section of your ad properties to target your ad based on contextual keywords.

• In the targeting section, select Add targeting.
• Choose Contextual keywords.
• Enter contextual keywords separated by commas (for example: travel, vacation, flights).
• Save your change.

Use Contextual keyword targeting for an existing targeting template:

Use the Contextual keywords section of your targeting template to target your ad based on contextual keywords.

Limitations

• Contextual keyword targeting works on checking web page content, app store description, and video metadata, but doesn’t work for in-app content.
• Contextual keyword latency: If you target contextual keywords for a new subject matter, such as contextual keywords related to recent news, it may take Campaign Manager 360 one or more days before the contextual keyword is targetable.
• There may be limitations on how contextual keyword targeting is applied on some video and app inventory based on how Campaign Manager 360 determines video and app content.