Marketing itself often falls prey to the same challenges that bedevil the stuff that marketers market. Repackaging hoary concepts like advertorials takes some creative thinking. Luckily, marketers are up to the task of remarketing their marketing.

Contextual marketing is a good example. The term appears to not have existed prior to 1975 or so but seems to have really caught on recently. Before then, there didn't seem to be any reason to put those two words together.

That's because marketing is inherently contextual. There's always a context to your marketing, just like there's a context to every action. You could argue that you're a proponent of contextual walking if you can explain the reasoning and circumstances around your perambulations. Contextual eating, meanwhile, occurs whenever you can furnish information about the setting and thoughts that went behind each bite.

In practice, though, contextual marketing means something more specific, though it's not 100% clear what. David Jacobs, consumer protection counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog group, says he believes contextual marketing refers to advertising that's designed to align with the media property in which it appears. For example, if you're browsing Auto Trend then you'll see ads for cars and motor oil. If you're watching Bridezillas then you might see ads for feminine products. And so on. Jacobs has no truck with this form of advertising, which he views as benign and non-invasive of users' privacy.

However, not everyone agrees with his definition. Mike Tittel, executive creative director for ad agency gyro in Cincinnati says contextual marketing actually refers to behavioral targeting. In Tittel's view, if you browsed Saucony Jazz sneakers on Amazon and then went to Facebook and were served up an Amazon ad for Saucony Jazz sneakers, then you were just on the receiving end of some contextual marketing.

Muddying the waters further, in the digital world, there's more of a natural spillover these days between contextual marketing and native advertising. That's because while the standard ad formats for TV, print and radio are pretty set, the Internet has viewed the social media and mobile revolution as a chance for a do-over in which the lines between advertising and editorial are blurred a bit. You could argue for instance that a sponsored listicle on BuzzFeed is contextual in the sense that it mirrors the media environment in which it appears. However, the ad does not employ the use of cookies or a persistent ID to track your browsing habits, so it doesn't meet Tittel's definition.

Who's right? If you believe Wikipedia is the supreme authority on such matters, then Tittel aced this one. However, just because Tittel knows what contextual marketing is doesn't mean he's necessarily a huge fan. In Tittel's view, advertisers have done a great job using behavioral targeting to find people who are in the market for products, but they've dropped the ball when it comes to giving them relevant offers. "The offers haven't caught up with contextual messaging," he says.

Image via Getty, Justin Sullivan