Audience targeting is not the same as targeting specific media; media targeting involves buying impressions across named publishers that are sold because they more or less match audience criteria whereas audience targeting identifies specific consumers based on demographic or other more concrete data points across all publishers.
Advertisers use audience targeting because they know precisely what consumers they need to go after based on previous data point, and can therefore eliminate any unnecessary spend from their marketing efforts to be more efficient and effective with acquisition activities.
Advertisers can specify target audiences using a number of approaches: groups built by third party Data Management Platforms, collected from a previous campaign, collected by an advertiser or built using a combination of the aforementioned.
3rd party Data Management Platform audiences: Advertisers can leverage existing pre-built audiences that match requirements or create specific new audience groups using the vast data sets on offer from third party DMPs. These audiences may be socio-demographic, behavioural, Interest-based, (interested in cars, travel, etc.), location based or any other available option.
Smadex has integrated with location derived audience platform Statiq to power local audience targeting for brands and agencies. Advertisers can use existing segments or build new groups.
Campaign data: Advertisers can create audiences from their own campaign based on collecting data from pre-defined events. Using this data, advertisers can then target users based on specific and relevant actions. Further examples include targeting inactive and dormant users.
Smadex supports custom post-click event tracking and reporting. Events data captured can be used to build future audience groups for targeting purposes
Advertiser data: Advertiser data is the most common use case for retargeting – reaching users that have visited the advertiser app or web site. For retargeting campaigns, the performance can be significantly improved by adapting the creative dynamically and display to users the most relevant content related to what they’ve viewed before.
Advertisers can securely upload their data into the Smadex platform for retargeting campaigns and build dynamic creatives based on rules such as offers by geo-location.
The overarching message to advertisers is that the more data they can share with Demand-Side Platforms like Smadex, the more effective the DSP will be at optimising campaigns to achieve objectives. Advertisers can share their data with DSPs via trackers, pixels, or specific API integrations.
Retargeting case study
Smadex worked with a digital agency on an innovative retargeting campaign to drive initial downloads and then bookings for a global taxi app.
Smadex ran the campaign for the taxi app over two phases. The first phase focused on acquisition (downloads and registrations), and the second phase focused on stimulating users that had downloaded the app but not booked any taxis.
The app recorded key custom events and this data was passed back to Smadex to drive retargeting campaign activity.
Results: There was significant value from retargeting users that had downloaded the app but not taken any action. The campaign data demonstrated boosted taxi bookings from retargeting and Return on Investment; For every app downloaded recorded, there were over 10 taxi bookings!
