After much debate and mixed signals, Google is not completely killing off cookies—at least right now. So, it is worth taking a look at how the landscape for advertisers has already changed dramatically when it comes to targeting consumers online.

We know from Apple’s experience with Safari that most consumers will opt out of tracking if given a choice. And that choice is exactly what Google is now offering. As brands continue to debate how they’re going to show up in this new environment, the AI revolution is already creating the roadmap for success.

The new technology, which has upended so many parts of the industry, is breathing new life into a tried-and-true concept: contextual advertising.

Contextual advertising itself is not new: Every medium that has come along has brought its own promises of a breakthrough in how advertisers can better target consumers and reach them when they’re most persuadable. The old way of doing contextual advertising—putting a car ad in car content, for instance—goes only so far. It may tell you something about intent, but only AI can use intent to predict new audiences and uncover patterns and trends throughout the entire open web.

When magazines and newspapers were the dominant delivery vehicle for ads, marketers would merge their products with what was on the page. But lead times were long and there was a fair amount of prediction that could not be accurately made.

Television and radio allowed advertisers to refine the practice of contextual advertising, with live formats enabling marketers to identify, say, a genre of music being played and tie in their ad to reach that audience. Commercials on TV could take advantage of Nielsen data and point their messages toward certain demographics (food products during cooking shows; toys during Sesame Street, for example).

Billboards and direct mail introduced another key contextual component. Advertisers could find people where they lived and worked and serve up ads that were relevant to their locations.

Then the Internet came and essentially allowed advertisers to combine all these forms of contextual marketing into one. Instead of guessing, advertisers could track users across the Web and talk to them in real time. 

Now, with AI, contextual advertising has taken a new leap:

Real-time conversation

As we can see from history, contextual advertising has been an arms race focused on getting to a consumer quickly enough to remain relevant to what they’re interested in. From print to digital ads, speed to market has steadily increased.

With AI, natural language processing capabilities can essentially engage consumers in real-time conversations and remain updated and relevant as they move through their online journey without the need for delay.

Predicting interests and intent

Even more valuable than knowing where a consumer is: knowing where they are going in the future.

AI systems can understand human intent, based on a significant volume of information processed quickly, and make well-informed predictions about what a consumer is looking for next. Rather than tracking past behavior the way cookies do, AI can make smart decisions about what someone is interested in based on sophisticated mapping of relationships among keywords, topics and other data points. 

Increased relevance

By reading and responding to contextual clues in real time, and subjecting them to predictive analysis, AI delivers more relevant ad targeting than cookies or static contextual advertising.

Free from the confines of whatever personal data cookies and other similar programs collect, AI essentially reads consumers’ interests with “fresh eyes” by basing its recommendations on a users’ expressed intent rather than a storehouse of demographic data.

Enhanced privacy

As a result, users don’t feel like their privacy is being invaded—because it’s not. From cookies to Apple’s Safari updates, the direction of user experiences has gone one way: toward more privacy and stronger protection of data.

AI meets this moment perfectly by engaging with consumers in a useful and relevant way while preserving what’s most important to the online experience, namely safety and privacy. 

The latest technology driving contextual advertising solves most, if not all, of the challenges posed by previous iterations. AI preserves and evolves the value to advertisers while creating new and stronger privacy measures for users.

Because of this, advertisers can feel confident investing in the latest tech to reach consumers in a way that makes them feel understood and protected.