Contextual Advertising

Advertising based on the content of the current webpage or app being viewed, rather than on a user's browsing history or profile. For example, showing running shoe ads on a marathon training article, or travel ads on a vacation planning site. Contextual advertising analyzes page content, keywords, topics, and categories to display relevant ads without tracking individual users across sites. This approach has gained renewed attention as privacy regulations restrict behavioral tracking and browsers phase out third-party cookies. From a privacy perspective, contextual advertising is friendlier because it doesn't require building user profiles or cross-site tracking. However, it may still involve some data processing (like IP addresses for fraud prevention) and use first-party cookies. Contextual advertising provides relevant content without the privacy intrusion of behavioral tracking, making it an increasingly attractive alternative as the advertising ecosystem adapts to privacy requirements.