Ad targeting is one of the most essential digital advertising strategies your marketing team should undertake. Advertising dollars may go waste if your business don’t have a clear plan of audiences they want to target for their campaigns.
Targeting is significant in your digital advertising campaigns because it helps you deliver the right content to the right audience, which boosts your ROAS on ad campaigns.
According to a survey fromMarketing Charts, 40.5% of respondents were happy to see ads directed toward their interests (targeted ads).
In this article, we will be looking at some Ad targeting techniques you can use in your digital advertising campaigns and why you needs to explicitly define your business’s ad targeting strategies for each campaign.
What is Ad targeting?
Ad targeting is an online advertising technique where businesses run advertising campaigns that are directed at a certain group of audiences with similar goals.
In short, targeted ads are tailor-made advertising caampaigns that speaks to every customer based on their current journey with you.
Ad targeting is a powerful advertising technique that helps you get your brand message towards people who may be interested in your product offerings.
There are three (3) ad targeting techniques you can adopt for your business. They are:
1. Demographic targeting
2. Behavorial targeting
3. Contextual targeting
Demographic Targeting
Considered as one of the most commonly used ad targeting techniques, demographic targeting helps you place your brand message across a group of people who share similar demographic traits like age, gender, location, etc.
Advertisers who prefer demographics targeting may use it to:
1. Advertise their products in certain regions.
2. Choose their ideal customer’s based on age or gender.
Demographic Targeting case study:
A local bakery shop may use demographic targeting to advertise its birthday cake ads to cities they can only serve. For example, a cake shop in Accra can run ads to be visible to people only in Accra.
Platforms that support demographic targeting:
Google Ads, Meta Business, Bing Ads, LinkedIn Ads.
Behavioral Targeting
Behavioral targeting is the next digital advertising technique I want to talk about. It is when advertisers target new audiences based on their interests or past activities on the web.
This type of advertising allows advertisers to display relevant ads or marketing messages that target customers based on their browsing behavior or interests.
For example, an ad may be displayed to you based on you researching on a particular topic, visiting a website, content you mostly interact with (page visits and time spent), people who have purchased from you before, etc.
Behavioral Targeting Case study:
A fashion shop can run a Facebook ad that targets people who dropped off while making completing a purchase on its e-commerce store. The ad may contain a message that encourages customers to complete purchase.
Platforms that support Behavioral targeting:
Meta business suite, LinkedIn ads, Google ads, Youtube Ads
Contextual targeting
Contextual targeting allows you to run digital advertising campaigns that target your audiences based on where they spend most of their time. It includes running ads on relevant apps and sites where most of your audiences are likely to engage with your brand.
An advertiser can run Contextual targeting ads by
1. Sponsoring content publication on other sites
2. Native ads in video and Infographics
3. Display ads
Contextual Targeting case study:
A fitness company may choose to show their fitness tracker watch Ad on lifestyle and body goals websites only.
Contextual Targeting Platforms:
Google Ads, Youtube ads
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Yes, but, there’s a catch. It all depends on your budget. Although mixing them will give you great results. However, keep track of every data and attribute them to the right targeting techniques to see the value.
Ild suggests always activating your demographic targeting if you are running below-the- funnel goals like taking action or even considering. Meanwhile, top-of-the-funnel goals like awareness can go without demographic targeting in other to test your audience size.
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