YMAX CONTEXTUALLY CURATED SEGMENTS PROVEN MORE RELEVANT, EFFICIENT, & PERFORMANT THAN IAB CATEGORY TARGETED INVENTORY
The challenge
Traditional contextual targeting often relies on IAB category segments like “Sports” or “Health & Fitness.” These broad classifications can misfire, grouping relevant and completely unrelated content together. In many cases, it is simply inefficient to include a category with just a few pages within it that are relevant to a campaign as it leads to too much waste. A leading sportswear brand wanted to test whether a contextual strategy rooted in semantic AI and URL-level precision could outperform standard IAB targeting using the same creative, inventory pool, and budget.
THE SOLUTION
The campaign deployed YMax curated supply segments against a leading contextual vendor’s IAB-category-based classifications. YMax’s contextual engine analyzed every page to surface precise, brand-relevant URLs—like sneaker review pages and training gear recommendations—that standard taxonomies often miss. Across the same YMax curated open-web inventory and with identical creative, the complete YMax curated delivery vastly outperformed the inventory within the deal that would have been targetable using only IAB categories relevant to the brand (Sports, Careers, Personal Finance, Health & Fitness)
THE RESULTS
+81% CTR
Using this approach resulted in an 81% higher click-through rate compared to standard IAB category targeting.
-65% CPC and -39% CPM
Delivering -65% CPC and -39% CPM, demonstrating superior efficiency on the same inventory pool
Hyper-Relevant Targeting
Hyper-relevant targeting Captured URLs the IAB targeting wouldn’t reach by design, including high-value pages on Eatingwell, Cosmopolitan, and GoodHousekeeping.com—that were all highly relevant to the brand’s footwear campaign
Reached Relevant URLs Missed by IAB Vendor
YMax also reached critical, relevant URLs that were missed or miscategorized by the leading IAB vendor, such as those on CBS Sports and Fantasypros
Some of the most relevant URLs for the campaign can't be effectively targeted using IAB categories
Even top IAB vendors miss critical sports URLs. YMax captures them to drive greater relevance and scale
YMax reached but missed by vendor
/nfl/draft/mock-draft/
/golf/rankings/
YMax reached & correctly categorized by vendor
/nfl/
/college-football/
YMax reached but missed by vendor
/nfl/rankings/consensus-cheatsheets.php
YMax reached & correctly categorized by vendor
/nfl/rankings/dst.php
CONCLUSION
Precision context wins. YMax’s semantic segmentation uncovered valuable, intent-rich pages invisible to standard contextual tools, improving both performance and cost efficiency without sacrificing scale.