If content is King, then context is Queen. Marketers who don’t test their advertising in context risk undermining the potency of their content.

When Bill Gates coined the phrase ‘Content is King’ in 1996, the digital marketing revolution was only just sharpening its pitchfork. In the last 25 years, people have increasingly moved online, and marketers have followed.

And while it might be easy to assume that digital advertising penetration has reached equilibrium, this year’s Media Reactions study reveals otherwise. In fact, this trend will only continue to accelerate, with 79% of global marketers reporting that they intend to increase their online video spend further in 2022. Given such high levels of spending, the study illuminates something incredibly important about advertising on digital media: different channels are perceived to have different personalities – and this affects how consumers perceive the content on them.