In the early days of online display advertising, marketers equated a target audience with the demographic of a selected premium site placement. But in today’s data- and technology-driven world, display advertisers can supplement and even substitute standard premium buys with audience targeting.
With audience targeting, advertisers tap into a wealth of first-hand and third-party data, including demographic, geographic or behavioral audience information to identify potential audiences or retarget previous site visitors.
This year, nearly all (97%) display advertisers will use audience targeting, according to DIGIDAY and PubMatic.
Not only is audience targeting popular with display advertisers, but data from DIGIDAY and targeting provider/audience aggregatorAudienceScience, found it also drives additional display spending growth: 48.2% of agencies and 52.8% of advertisers said targeting use had increased display budget.
Marketers were most willing to allocate additional budget based on audience targeting’s effectiveness. In addition, 28% of agencies and 21% of marketers said the technique’s ability to afford greater audience reach justified further spend.
But agencies and advertisers differ slightly in their use of targeting. Agencies commonly employed three or more targeting types, whereas advertisers most often used two.
Agencies are typically the first to adopt new marketing technology and master its use; tenure with audience targeting is perhaps one reason agencies appear to be comfortable using more targets than traditional advertisers.
Whether display marketers are veterans or novices, it’s clear the majority will look to leverage audience targeting as part of their display program this year with the potential for increased budget an added benefit of its effective use.
Marketingfood 