• by Jim Meskauskas , August 21, 2003

It is my sincerest hope that those of you living in regions from the Great Lakes to the North Eastern seaboard are all back up and running. I hope that you've replenished those ice trays, digested those softening pints of Ben and Jerry's, and thrown out that pack of chicken thighs that was on the verge of going bad BEFORE the black out of 2003 even got under way.

I'd love to take this time to tell you stories of that night in Manhattan when the lights went out and the city got jiggy with it, but this isn't the best forum. Needless to say it was the first time I have ever seen stars in the sky here, and it was really cool to see so many people be so helpful and friendly with one another. I was mostly in the Village, near our offices, and folks in that area were out directing traffic, joking about looting rather actually doing it, or petting the horses of the mounted police.

Be it a result of a cultural change here since 9/11 or due to the fact that things are a lot less hard boiled at night, it was the coolest, biggest, friendliest sleep-over the City has likely ever had. It was as dark in the City as it was for denizens from the pre-gaslight era. I was fortunate enough to meet up with friends at our de facto emergency meeting place, a wonderful old pub that has stood in its current location since 1815 in a fabulous old Federalist structure; a place called the Ear (the Ear is for listening). We then shuffled through the darkness to an acquaintance's apartment where the ten of us proceeded to play a round of "Celebrity."

What I did learn is that the Internet is NOT a medium best suited for communicating during a massive power outage. Text messaging and those Nextel walkie-talkie phones had a big night, however. The Internet, though, is not much of a hero when it comes to an electricity-based calamity.

What it is good at, however, is Contextual Advertising.

Although contextual advertising -- advertising found in or surrounded by content that has affinity with a product or service, such as articles or search results -- has been around for years, suddenly what was once old is new again and the tactic is hotter than that night that the lights went out and the air conditioners stopped humming.

Whenever I looked up information or news on the biggest blackout in decades, I'd get some ad or advertising-like unit that was either explicitly or implicitly associated with power outages, power supplies, natural disasters, and general profiteering.

On NYtimes.com, if you look up the phrase "black out" as two words, you get a Google AdSense that takes you to a privately published book on solar panels.

On Google itself, I get AdWords that are for online shops selling "official" T-shirts emblazoned with "I survived the blackout of 2003" or "I survived Black Thursday."

One such link takes me to a shop that sells coffee mugs and thongs.

The whole context concept is really quite old. It is how a lot of media planning has been done for ages. A great deal of print planning has been based on targeting audiences that are assumptive based on content.

So, why is it once again all the rage?

Partly it's because Overture and Google are pushing the concept in a pretty major way. It is also in part due to the fact that media buyers are looking for a relatively easy and painless way to buy massive amounts of inventory without having to target by hand each placement on a site-by-site basis.

It's also because it does happen to work as a strategy if you don't have any research and are at a loss as to what media to buy for a particular product or service. Given the rate at which clients demand media plans these days, the pressure is enough to make a diamond blush. This has created a need for faster, less deliberative planning.

Contextual targeting is the first step for most media plans. Sitting down and brainstorming a list of media vehicles that might suit a client's objectives is part and parcel of any media planning process.

Some of the reliance on contextualization for the purpose of quick-and-dirty media planning may present a new opportunity for the re-birth of the ad network. Not that they've ever really gone away, but like the California condor, they were becoming rare and precious a species, seen rarely in nature. But the ad network, mixed with a search-marketing precision and cutting edge technology, may experience a bit of a renaissance in this climate.

Of course contextual targeting doesn't always hit its mark, especially in the search space. After all, if I type in 'Mustang,' am I looking for the horse, the car, or the brothel in Nevada?

But when you are pressed for time and you are planning media by tallow candle, going contextual is a great place to start.