Audience Targeting

Audience targeting allows an advertiser to choose who they want to serve their ads to based on characteristics such as location, browsing behavior, interests and device use. Depending on your campaign objective, you can either go narrow or broad with your audience targeting. For example, if your campaign objective is brand awareness, you will want to consider opening up your targeting to a larger audience (ie. Canada & US). But if the majority of your clients are in the US, and you want to specifically target the US, you can narrow down your location targeting accordingly.

Location targeting allows an advertiser to select specific locations of where they would like their ad to be shown. Advertisers have the option to select countries, regions, and cities and this is determined by how broad or narrow their audience is. Some advertising platforms will allow you to target locations by DMA or ZIP/Postal codes.

Contextual targeting gives the advertiser autonomy to select the type of pages they want their ads to show on. Advertisers can select certain categories pertaining to interests a user may have and then their ads will show on these specific web pages. For example, an advertiser may decide they want their ads served only on pages related to ‘fitness and health’.

You can choose the language of the page that you want your ads to be served on. For example, if your primary audience is located in the US and are Spanish-speaking, you can select ‘Spanish’, and your ads will only be served on Spanish pages to users residing in the US.

You can target users based on the device they are using. You can further narrow down device targeting by specific models, makes, operating systems/versions, browsers and even browser language.

For example, you may want your ads to appear on mobile devices only if you are running a local campaign, and want to reach people in close proximity to your brick and mortar store. Whereas, if you are a software company, you would most likely want your ads to be displayed on desktop where people can complete the signup process more easily.

Note: not all advertising platforms allow this much control, but most platforms allow advertisers to select specific browsers and operating systems to serve ads on.

While contextual targeting allows for placing ads based on web page content, inventory targeting is about selecting specific websites and/or apps for your ads to be served on. This feature is great for advertisers who want greater control over their inventory, and want to target a very niche audience (for example, married females aged 25-35 who play soccer).