Modern advertising has come a long way since the magazine copy of Mad Men. Yet while recent decades have brought a natural evolution, the biggest changes have come from our technological advances. One example of this is programmatic advertising. Although it might sound complicated, “programmatic” just means “automated,” and refers to the process through which digital ads are purchased and sold. In the past, online advertising was manually exchanged between the advertiser and domain, but today the majority of these are done with AI. Intelligent ad-buying software facilitates, purchases, and sells digital ad space, increasing the efficiency of the process and the efficacy of the ads themselves. This machine-learning processes data on a level beyond human ability, meaning it’s quicker and more accurate in its assessment of effective digital ad placement. That doesn’t mean the humans using the software don’t maintain control. Well-formulated tactics provide digital advertising campaigns with clear strategies and optimal outcomes. In the following guide, we introduce targeting tactics in programmatic advertising that will help you navigate the digital jungle to best achieve your online advertising goals.

Act-Alike Audiences

With act-alike audiences, you can target prospects based on their digital behavior; namely, these are people who behave the same (or similarly) as current visitors to your site. By targeting people who act similarly to your current site visitors, you maximize the chance that they’ll exhibit the same key behaviors — engaging positively with your site, brand, and/or products, etc. In other words, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck — and other ducks love what you offer — it’s probably a duck who will love you, too. Because this audience type is based on user behaviors, there’s fewer behavioral variables that would otherwise mean you’re lowering conversion rates by targeting those “destined” to be uninterested. Thus, targeting act-alike audiences results in greater efficiency and fewer wasted resources (ad dollars). Act-alike audiences identify digital behaviors that correspond with users of your site, but if there’s a weakness, it’s that they don’t increase volume beyond such digital behaviors. There’s always the possibility that there are other behaviors that can help drive conversions, but if those behaviors haven’t already been discovered, you don’t have their information and thus can’t target others that are similar. Here are examples of act-alike audiences for Duck Brand, a retailer for Duct Tape:

1. Act-Alike Audiences for Any Site Visitors – This gives you the largest pool of data to use as a baseline for audience building.
2. Act-Alike Audiences for Site Visitors Who View Location Pages – Through location pages, you can strengthen your brand signal based on site visitors that have demonstrated interest in taking the next step.
3. Act-Alike Audiences for Site Visitors Who View Contact Pages – By implementing pixels on the Contact page, you gain insights about your most qualified audience and better understand the full customer journey to optimize for conversions.

Content Audiences

Targeting content audiences means you’re finding prospects that consume the same digital content as current site visitors and/or a pre-identified target audience. This primarily includes those that view the same websites and use the same apps. This is helpful because much of digital content consumption can be cordoned into demographics. For example, there are audiences that read Buzzfeed, which differs from the demographic trends of the r/CFB subreddit, which again differs from audiences who use the Chase Mobile app. From these trends, you know which media are more often frequented by your target audience. Once you define your audience and what content they consume, you can use that data to find the most promising prospects. If you can’t just automatically target, say, white women in their late 20s who are food-savvy and like baseball, content audiences are the next best thing. The fact that these audiences consume the same digital media as your current site visitors means they’re informed by the same things, in the same way. They’re likely to hold similar viewpoints, be of similar persuasions, and be open to the same angles as those who already have engaged with your brand. Not only are you targeting a demographic inclined to view you favorably, you’re targeting a demographic plus the attitude inclined to do so. Here are examples of building content audiences for Duck Brand:

1. Define the Audiences – People who enjoy crafting, home improvement, DIY projects
2. Outline Sites – scotchbrand.com, tapeplanet.com
3. Create Model for Creating Content Audiences
4. Use Data Science to Find The Best Prospects

Location Targeting

Location targeting is what it sounds like: targeting prospects based on a predetermined location. Just as the name “location targeting” is pretty intuitive, so is the reasoning for it. If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, your target market will most likely be within a specific geographic radius or area. For example, there’s no point advertising to people in San Francisco if your business is firmly rooted in Boise. Even if you’re primarily a digital business not physically limited by space (i.e. a brick-and-mortar or the like), some brands are still regionally rooted. If your site sells cross country ski gear, your audience is primarily in New England, Minnesota, and the Pacific Northwest. Because you’re not a brick-and-mortar, you could sell to people outside of that area, but you’ll hardly increase conversions by targeting audiences in Hawaii. There are several different strategies for location targeting:

1. ”Here Now” targeting – Targeting audiences currently at the designated location. This could be your business, a sporting event or a conference.
2. “Here Recently” targeting – Targeting those who were recently at the targeted location. It can be thought of like a physical version of digital retargeting; instead of targeting those who have recently visited your online site, you’re targeting those who’ve recently visited your physical site.
3. “Radius” targeting – Targeting based on people within a certain radius of the designated location.
4. “Homing” targeting – Targeting those who live within a certain distance of your designated target.

For example, with Duck Brand, you could use location targeting to target people relative to Hobby Lobby (a similar retailer to Duck Brand that is a brick-and-mortar) in the following ways:

1. People currently at Hobby Lobby stores
2. People recently at Hobby Lobby stores
3. People within a certain radius of Hobby Lobby stores
4. People who live within a certain distance of Hobby Lobby stores

Interest Targeting

Interest targeting is similar to act-alike targeting but is a bit more broad. If your product is popular with people who enjoy interest x, then others who also enjoy interest x may also be more likely to find value in your product or service than the general population. By emphasizing contextually relevant environments in your prospect search, you increase the likelihood that each dollar spent on this advertising will draw someone in. For example, if you own a brewery, focus your efforts on interests associated with beer, like those related to food, lifestyle, sports, and entertainment. Interest targeting bets that by filtering audiences by interest and identifying which of those overlap with audiences who prefer your product, you can deduce who else is likely to prefer it and then put more of your resources targeting those audiences. These audiences would subsequently have higher conversion rates than if you were targeting the average consumer. For Duck Brand, people interested in crafts, home décor, and DIY projects may also watch TV programs on HGTV:

Retargeting

Retargeting was mentioned previously as being similar to “here recently” location targeting, except using digital instead of physical space to determine interest. While “here recently” targets those who have visited your physical location recently, retargeting focuses on those who have visited your digital location recently, AKA, your website. In the same way that those who’ve visited your physical location are more likely to convert on a sale in the future, those who have visited your website are more likely to convert as well. After all, who’s more likely to buy your product — someone who’s already shown you self-generated interest in the past, or any random joe? Retargeting has the potential to be the most effective of all these programmatic tactics. Unlike the other four strategies, you don’t have to use preemptive evidence to determine if a group is likely to be interested in your product — you already know they’re interested in you. Plus, because this audience is further down the purchase or conversion funnel, they’re inherently closer to pulling the trigger, so you can spend less resources converting someone that falls under this group. While efficient, the disadvantage to retargeting is that it doesn’t increase user volume. In this way, its weakness is a more acute version of the weakness that can corresponds with act-alike targeting; if targeting act-alike audiences doesn’t expand volume beyond those with a specific digital behavior, retargeting doesn’t expand volume base at all. Although this is something to keep in mind, all forms of targeting are about choosing between volume or efficiency — retargeting is just on the extreme-efficiency and bottom of the conversion funnel. For Duck Brand, a retargeting audience could include people who have subscribed to the mailing list through the website:

So… Why Use Programmatic Display Advertising

As you’ve probably gathered, many of these tactics are about cutting out unnecessary resources and targeting that are not relevant to your brand, service or products. Programmatic display advertising is the most effective digital marketing platform to be able to reach your target demographic in all of the different places on the internet where they are. It has become much more sophisticated over the years. If you would like to learn more about this powerful channel or other areas to help grow your business please reach out to us directly. We’d love to hear from you.