Quoting Horst Stipp of the Advertising Research Foundation in the Journal of Advertising Research, the study concludes: “If marketers understand their specific targets’ affinity to the content with which their consumers engage, as well as the role of other contexts—such as other media platforms, time and place—there are real opportunities to enhance the effectiveness of advertising messages.”

Why we care. Marketers are being forced to re-evaluate their targeting strategies as the third-party data ecosystem is getting up-ended. This study indicates the loss of data for targeting might not be as catastrophic as many fear. It also concludes that it’s not as simple as pairing a cat food brand with an article on cats. (For one, reach will be too limited for mass marketers.) But context beyond the content itself matters, too.