Speaking in examples: A car manufacturer showing an ad of his newest car addition to a person interested in cars. Sounds easy, right? Thinking in theory – it is. But how will you make sure to really reach this user interested in cars? Prior to the digital age, brands used to advertise their products in newspapers, billboards or other analogue media channels. The digital age itself offered a lot of opportunities to further improve targeting options such as socio-demographic targeting to contextual targeting. What they all have in common: they focus on the environments where your target group is likely to be. In our example of the car manufacturer, this could be an automotive blog for example. Or a fashion retailer that positions his ad in an article about New York fashion week in a news magazine. Speaking of classical targeting, it is always a matter of being present in the environments in which your target group potentially spends time.

So far so good. But what if the person we want to address and show our content to, is indeed interested in cars but does not spend any time on automotive blogs? Or the fashionable user is not interested in New York fashion week at all and does therefore not read the article in the news magazine we put our ad in? Right, we’re facing spreading losses and spend money on users we think of are present in a specific environment, that aren’t. This can have a massive impact on your Return on Investment, which I’m sure we all want to avoid.

So what can we do to prevent such spreading losses and really make sure to target the right people. The answer is audience targeting. As per definition, audience targeting means moving away from targeting a specific environment to targeting a specific user on any environment he or she is, no matter if that environment is related to your product/company or not. Imagine the person interested in cars does not read automotive blogs but is a huge fan of home gardening. So instead of trying to catch him or her on an automotive blog he or she doesn’t read anyway, position your ad in an online journal for home gardening and by doing this make sure to deliver the right message to the right people. Or thinking about Metaverse, positioning an ad in the VR glasses of a user interested in cars in a specific colour as soon as a car of your brand in this colour passes by. Admitted, this last example is more an example of the future, but you see that audience targeting opens a lot of opportunities. In other words: it enables you to more effectively deliver personalized and optimized ad experiences based on customer needs and interests.

Now the question might pop up in your head, HOW you can realize audience targeting and how to actually know WHERE to find the person interested in cars when not in an automotive blog. That’s a justified question that can easily be answered by one word: Data. You might have heard earlier in one of our videos what different kinds of data there are and how you can make use of them. Amongst 2nd- and 3rd-party data, 1st-party-data is probably the most valuable source for techniques like audience targeting. Although it comes with some restrictions, it is a powerful tool to bring your audience targeting to the next level.

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