Read the following case study and then answer the questions that follow: As a child, Chris Kunene took notes on the commercials that interrupted his Saturday morning cartoons. He noticed a mismatch between many shows and the products advertised during them. Chris shared his thoughts with his grade three teacher, looking for reasons. Well, said his teacher, it looks like someone is not doing their job. Today, Chris has turned his contextual marketing hobby into a career, overseeing data product and insight practices at Kargo. Kargo is a global mobile-first, editorial-led marketplace of unique multi-channel advertising and commerce opportunities for brands. The advertising technology company creates and delivers advertising campaigns to a large audience of smartphone users, using contextual advertising, without sacrificing brand safety or security against advertisement fraud. As the advertising industry moves away from third-party cookies due to privacy concerns and changing technology, many advertising technology companies are scrambling to find new ways to target relevant consumers. Kargo stays ahead by prioritising data-driven contextual advertising over the cookie approach. Contextual advertising is nothing new. From newspaper and magazine display advertisements to TV and web page placements, contextual adverts have matched brand messaging to relevant content for decades. But todays advancements in big data, automation and artificial intelligence have amplified the power of contextual advertising. Using IBMs Watson, Kargo can refine contextual signals within the publishers they support, compiling and clustering by customer interests, habits and challenges. Through this approach, Kargo obtains a deeper understanding of the reader, which it uses to build relevant advertising experiences. These experiences help with the value exchange by bringing relevant brand messages aligned to their adjacent stories.

What is IBM Watson? IBM Watson is a data analytics processor that uses natural language processing, a technology that analyses human speech for meaning and syntax. IBM Watson performs analytics on vast repositories of data that it processes to answer human-posed questions, often in a fraction of a second.

Kargos holistic data-driven contextual advertising approach requires the company to know what each piece of content is about, and to pair it with a given brand or advert vertical. With this approach, publishers and advertisers dont have to rely on external vendors. Kargo creates an actionable, first-party data set to inform contextual advertising decisions by analysing publisher web page content and applying keyword targeting research, sentiment analysis and other analytical tools.

Note: In your answers, you will be awarded more marks for integrating the theory and facts from the case study than if you discuss them separately.

Q.2.1 Explain how data analytics can help businesses like Kargo discover insights. (10)

Q.2.2 With the use of examples applicable to the case study, explain how data can be transformed into information and knowledge.

(10) Q.2.3 Justify the use of search engine marketing, with reference to the case study. (10)