Precise automation
Semantic ad systems analyze and automatically understand the text found on a page, identifying with great precision the topics discussed and, by interacting in a transparent way with the advertising server, selecting the most relevant ads to be included on that page.
While traditional keyword systems can also be automated to load advertisements onto a page, they still run into the problem of finding the correct meaning.
Take, for example, the word "jaguar." If a page contained the word "jaguar," the keyword system would not be able to differentiate between the car brand and the animal, as you'll see in the below example on the New York Times' website. Conversely, a semantic system would understand that a reader interested in the story about a jaguar's natural habitat probably isn't interested in buying a Jaguar from the Great Neck, N.Y. dealership advertised next to the story.
Real-time monitoring and analysis
Semantic advertising also offers an additional advantage by increasing a publisher's view of its content through real-time monitoring and detailed analysis of web page text.
This semantic analysis extracts other relevant information on a page -- such as the main concepts, actions, event, sentiment, time, place, people, organizations and other key information. This allows a publisher to automate and deepen the niches in which to categorize content. The traditional means of doing this is to have a small army of staff to read and categorize. Of course, this does not scale well due to costs, so such efforts have proven crude at best over time. All advertising is about finding and exploiting ever more specific niches. Semantics provides the specificity at a cost that is palatable.
Social-cultural correlations
Lastly, semantic advertising also allows the ad manager to place ads based on socio-cultural correlations and identifying consumer trends. For example, a user interested in hybrid vehicles may also be interested in organic food. The relations are not direct, and may not include the same keywords, but they are incisive and effective.
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