Me and you, we have all been there. Having a conversation with a friend about wanting to buy a product. Later that day, while scrolling though you phone and bam, there are ads on your timeline for that EXACT product. Your flags are raised. Is you phone or the apps on it listening to us? Seeing targeted advertising after talking about something may lead you to think so.
There’s a reason this is happening, but “listening” is probably not it. Talking about something and seeing a digital ad for it. Thinking about something and seeing a digital ad for it. Even dreaming about something and seeing a digital ad for it.
The general consensus among industry experts is that they are telling the truth. For one, doing so would be illegal. Secondly, the logistics of actively listening to, recording and storing conversations just do not make sense when you really think about it.
What is the main goal of targeted advertising?
The goal of targeted advertising is twofold. The first aim is to ensure that adverts are reaching the right people at the right time, whether that’s by picking the right publication to advertise on or using the right data to target people in a social media context.
The second aim is to personalize that advert to an individual user or groups of users. Personalization is so important that 62% of consumers would consider switching brands if they don’t receive a personalized experience from that company.
So, in a nutshell—the goal is to reach the right customers at the right moment to spur a purchase. To achieve this, an effective targeted advertising campaign leverages various strategies to ensure optimal ad placement and to enhance personalization, aiming to engage consumers more effectively and increase the likelihood of conversion.
Tracking, not listening
So if Facebook and Instagram aren’t listening, then how do our conversations and thoughts about products magically turn into ads?
In a way, social platforms are “eavesdropping,” but just not in the way we think.
We see digital ads after talking about something because social media apps like Facebook and Instagram are extensively tracking our actions, both online and off.
Benefits of Targeted Advertising
Personalization
Ad personalization has become one of the “Holy Grails” of digital marketing, thanks to its well-documented effects on customer acquisition and retention, click-through rate (CTR), and customer lifetime value (CLV). Targeted advertising allows brands to send different messaging to different consumers based on what the brand knows about the customer. The better a brand can demonstrate that it understands what its customers want and need, the more likely customers respond to advertising and engage with the brand. Research bears out the facts:
Brand awareness and perception
If a brand’s ads are generic or poorly placed, potential customers will notice. Filling a customer’s browser with ads that don’t speak to their interests or offer something personally relevant will only hurt a brand’s perception and reputation among consumers. Conversely, brands can improve their reputation by presenting relevant ads and valuable content to the audiences that are likely to appreciate them. This is an essential part of brand awareness advertising. This will help boost recognition with high-value customers and establish the brand with strong brand equity in its niche.
Focused resource
Targeted advertising maximizes each piece of creative and content that a brand publishes to the internet. Generic advertising is low-reward and often costly relative to its concrete benefits, but targeting helps focus resources on the most rewarding audience groups. Paired with basic automation to publish ads that fit each audience segment, targeted advertisement takes much of the legwork out of finding high-potential customers and attracting them to the brand.
Increase brand marketing ROI
Targeted advertisements rely on data already collected about customers, using demographics, interest, and behavior trends to approach consumers the way they prefer to be engaged. Leveraging customer data takes the guesswork out of customer acquisition and reduces spending on users who are unlikely to convert.
Types of Targeted Advertising
Contextual
Contextual targeting helps marketers place ad content alongside other content that is related to the thing being advertised. Instead of pasting ads all over the web in places that have nothing to do with the brand or the product offered, contextual targeting matches the ad’s content with the context in which it’s placed. This creates a more integrated experience for customers that helps tell them that your product is related to something they are interested in.
Behavioral
Behavioral targeting is similar to contextual advertising but considers user behavior and browsing activity when positioning ads across the web. In this type of ad targeting, you can place ads for customers based on their search or browsing history. Other factors that can shape behavioral ad targeting include links clicked, purchases, time spent on web pages, social media follows, and more.
Geotargeting
Geotargeting is an essential tool in a marketer’s arsenal, especially for brands that operate regionally or in specific locations. It simply directs ads to publish for consumers based on their geographical location. This is also useful for brands that sell a location-dependent product or for advertisers marketing an event in a particular place.
Social media targeting
Social media has become a hotspot for advertising and ecommerce business, to the point that many shoppers now prefer to make purchases through social media instead of a brand’s website or in a retail store. For this reason among others, keeping your ads consistent across social media platforms is important, and our social media advertising tool makes that consistency easier to achieve. Social media targeting helps brands leverage consumers’ behavior on the web, search engines, and social media sites to present ads that reflect consumer interests. Social media targeting can also be considered a kind of behavioral targeting.
Retargeting
Retargeting is an essential tool for digital marketers because it capitalizes on customers who have already demonstrated interest in or engaged with a brand. It works by associating sets of ad messaging (display ads, emails, social media ads, etc.) with given behaviors when a customer is engaging with a brand online. For instance, a customer who purchases a pair of running shoes will likely be retargeted with ads about other running accessories.
Meeting Customers Where They Are
In today’s digital marketing ecosystem, customers are so accustomed to seeing ads during the course of their browsing that they often stop recognizing the ads entirely. For that reason, brands need to develop marketing strategies that meet customers where they are with personalized content and messaging that reflects an understanding of consumer desires as they relate to a particular product.
AdRoll’s audience targeting platform offers several types of audience targeting features to help you engage with your current and future customers wherever they are online.
Now that you know the different types of targeted advertising, let’s dive into how to create a strategy. Check out the resources below to get started.
Can tracking be stopped?
There are permissions you can play around with to limit how your information is used. However, if you are using any social platform in any capacity, then it has enough information to go off of to “learn” your potential interests for advertising purposes.
