Every advertiser wants to optimize the marketing expenditure, while every user wants to see only relevant ads. Therefore, different types of targeting are used in digital campaigns to recognize the target audience among all the users on the web. This article explains what targeting is, what types of targeting exist, and how we can use it.
What is targeting?
Targeting is one of the tools of marketing that allows identifying the target audience among all the Internet users based on specific criteria (e.g., age, geo, sex) and demonstrating the product precisely to this audience, thus achieving the maximum effectiveness of the ad.
Targeting makes advertising campaigns more effective and helps streamline the marketing budget.
Types of targeting
There is no unified classification of targeting types in programmatic advertising since it often depends on the platform capabilities. In Hybrid, we use the following classification:
Audience targeting
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Thematic — means utilizing the White Lists of websites to display ads only on platforms and apps related to a particular theme. |
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Contextual — helps display ads on pages with suitable content based on its instant analysis. One of the varieties is contextual targeting or Semantica. If you advertise products for newborns, you can natively show creatives in the articles with keywords: "Best infant formulas", "Breastfeeding", "Taking care of infants", etc. Contextual targeting has been used for 20 years and is one of the best solutions in the cookieless world. But to stay ahead of the game, it's essential to go with the time. You can find more information about one of the solutions and how it works in this article. |
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Behavioral — applies users' audience data (unique identifiers) based on their retrospective interests and website visits. Display your ad based on the user's website visits on the Internet, their views, purchases, payment methods, favorite websites, etc. This type of targeting is based on cookies, and it is most effective combined with other types of targeting. |
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Sociodemographic — functions using such audience data as sex, age, level of income and education, etc. |
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Retargeting — helps show ads to the users who have already interacted with the message or website to continue communication. |
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Look-Alike — targeting increases the target audience by searching for new users similar in their behavioral patterns to the current customers of a company or those who have taken targeted actions. One thousand people is the minimum number of users to build a look-alike audience. |
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Geotargeting — selects the audience on the basis of users' location and allows ads personalization for different regions. This is one of the most popular and widely spread types of targeting. It is topical for local businesses. |
Technical targeting
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Advertising display conditions
— Time — concrete intervals of time, days of the week, etc. It is possible to analyze the target audience's behavior and identify when it is most active. The features of a product or service also matter. For example, a business lunch ad will be more relevant on weekdays than entertainment events on weekends. — Trend — the ads will be delivered only when the popularity of a certain trend grows. — Frequency — putting limitations on the maximum number of ad deliveries per user over a given period of time. Here's a helpful piece of advice! It's better not to show creative content to a specific user more than five times a month since he won't notice your ads anymore. — Page and browser language — used to attract foreigners, bilinguals, users from multilingual countries, etc. Advertisers often aim at the language of a particular browser because it tends to be their user's mother tongue. — Trigger — an ad is delivered only if certain conditions are met. If you, for example, search the Internet for: |
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Device settings— Device type — smartphone, computer, Smart TV, gaming console, tablet, etc. — OS — version of the operating system — Connection type — Wi-Fi, LTE, 3G, or even E. It's essential for the video and interactive creative display. If a user has a bad connection, the creative will be either not fully loaded or distorted. As a result, the user will be annoyed. |
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Parameters of the advertising spot — Position on the page — Size |
Why use targeting?
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It allows optimizing the advertising expenditure by showing the ad specifically to the users interested in your product.
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It increases website conversion. When moving from an advertising message to a site, there is a higher chance a person who belongs to the target group will purchase a good or service.
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As a result of the increased conversion, website promotion in search engines is getting more effective. Besides the conversion, the average time spent on a website, page depth, and other behavioral characteristics also grow.
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The use of targeting allows reducing the extra work off the staff. For example, If you provide a service in Moscow, why promote it in the whole country? Your managers will receive many phone calls, and they will have to explain to everyone that the service is only available for Moscow residents.
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User-friendly communication. Targeting is also advantageous for the users because an ad we are not interested in irritates us and is absolutely useless. As a consequence, it only provoked negative emotions towards the brand.
Conclusion
Targeting allows narrowing down the audience that will see the ad. It also helps to target specific interested users. Using targeting, we can improve the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
When choosing a particular type of targeting, it is necessary to consider your target audience and the features of a product or service you advertise. Use different types of targeting in your campaigns, experiment, and find the strategies that will work for you.
