Video Blog- The Most Common Targeting for Paid Media

In the last ten years, the Digital Marketing world has changed dramatically and with that we saw significant changes with the available targeting methods for paid ads. 

From running ads targeting a geographic location only to being able to target multiple demographic indicators such as job, interests, age, and recent searches. We have come a long way to today’s multi-layered, sophisticated targeting.

With the correct targeting, we are able to show the right ad to the right people at the right time and increase ROI. 

Let’s go over the main targeting methods that every campaign should have.
You can also visit my full guide for Digital Ad Campaign Targeting Tactics here

Prospecting

Prospecting is any tactic in which you target users who have not yet visited your site. It attracts potential customers based on multiple different targeting tactics. The most common tactics for Prospecting are targeting by keywords, interests, and topics. 

Once we have those criteria, we add location, demographic information like age and gender, devices, and many other criteria to help you reach your ideal customer. 

In today's paid media ecosystem we can also target based on in-market segments, intent and contextual placements. 

Basically, in-market means that the people you’re targeting are already searching for your product or service. They’re people who are actively looking to buy and may be researching. 

Intent simply means targeting people who are looking at specific topics or solutions online. Based on the keywords they use while searching, the websites they visit, and the videos they watch, they are targeted by intent-specific ads. 

Contextual placements means that you as the advertisers can specify which websites your ads are showing on. This could be by the category that the website is or even by saying that you want to appear on a specific website.

Retargeting

Retargeting is a tactic in which you show ads to people who have previously engaged with your website or digital assets.

You can re-target people who only visited your site once (we call this a pageview), people who have purchased before or have engaged with your digital assets in any way. 

To retarget those people, you would need a data-based targeting tactic like a site pixel or an audience list- CRM or a subscribers list. If you don’t have those audiences yet, we can help you build them to reach customers who are further down the funnel. 

Lookalike

Lookalike targeting (on Facebook) and Similar Audience targeting (on Google) is based on your customer or potential customers’ first-party data. By using the lookalike tactic, the ad platform creates a list of people who are very similar in many different aspects to the audience you have chosen. By creating lists of users who are power users of your products and offers, you can create efficient lookalike audiences that help your bottom line.