Proving the impact of contextual relevance

Challenge

In response to increased concerns over user privacy, Google started exploring personalized ads that did not rely on user data. The award winning Pegasus ad format uses machine learning to contextualize ad content based on the content of the webpage. More details can be found on the WPP homepage here.

They approached Human Made Machine in 2019 to test the viability of this approach on the Guardian.

Solution

To measure the impact of the custom content, we built a simulated Guardian experience, featuring 140 different “Pegasus” approved articles. Respondents could choose an article to read, triggering the contextual elements of the ad and replicating the contextual relevance of the true ad.