JobNinja takes the work out of recruiting with contextual targeting

JobNinja is a young and fresh Munich-based job board that was established to simplify the recruiting process as much as possible. The company developed an innovative online platform to enable employers to easily reach and identify the right candidate for a job and vice versa—to help potential employees find and apply for an appropriate position with an extremely user-friendly tool.

The COVID pandemic tested the young company, which had to reconsider its strategies and redesign processes and tools. But by staying agile, JobNinja not only solidified its position in the market but expanded it. To maintain their upward trajectory, JobNinja must continue to meet their customers’ needs and expectations, create trust and confidence, and deliver satisfaction—which ultimately helps the company grow their audience base.

“Our existing (and likely potential) business partners and users expect information on (and from) the job market that’s useful, relevant, timely, practical and as complete as possible. By focusing on that, JobNinja can enhance its position in the market and fulfill its objectives,” said Mircea Popa JobNinja’s Co-Founder & CEO. “And here our partnership with Criteo plays a critical role in the implementation of contextual advertising. We are convinced that tailored contextual with smarter targeting, improved ad relevance, and the ability to reach qualified audiences will drive the business outcomes we predict.”

Making more meaningful matches

As anyone in the working world can attest, finding the right job or employee requires much more than simply matching a skillset to a job description. The best placements happen when experience, passion, and personality all align.

JobNinja knew this and saw contextual advertising as a prime opportunity to reach job seekers based on who they are, not just on what their resume—or a few keyword searches—say. Mircea explained, “Contextual targeting is focused on the real interest and subjective behavior of the jobseekers and might represent “the answer”: matched with the user interests and based on the relevant content rather than on the traditional browsing or searching history.”

Criteo’s contextual targeting uses interest signals and affinity scores along with contextual signals to zero in on the categories and URLs that are more likely to drive high-quality visitors to a site. These same interest signals are also used to personalize ad creatives and boost engagement. This was important to JobNinja, which wanted to showcase the most relevant content and bring in traffic that would be highly likely to convert.

“Criteo’s contextual capabilities may significantly raise the standard in our business,” added Mircea “and it is the solution we have chosen in order to better reach and address qualified audiences, to minimize the inefficiencies and reduce redundant ads, and finally to help us increase the conversion rate and impact overall sales. We consider it as the state-of-the-art in this challenging and demanding market.”

The contextual campaign reached 7.7 million new consumers, driving a click-through rate of 1.4%, all at a below-average cost per visit.

Preparing for today’s—and tomorrow’s—challenges

As a forward-thinking company, JobNinja is always looking for ways to stay ahead of change. Contextual targeting, in addition to meeting their traffic and conversion goals, also helps them rise above the challenges brought on by GDPR and the potential phasing out of third-party cookies.

They see their partnership with Criteo as an investment in the future as well: “When we decided to partner with Criteo it was intended as a long-term, mutual-benefit cooperation, so we are interested in investigating and investing more in identifying the best products and technologies that can potentially contribute to achieving our strategic goals.”