Audience Targeting Best Practices — Interest, Intent, & Location

Why Targeting Strategy Matters

Audiences drive efficiency

Well-defined audiences raise engagement, conversion, and ROI by focusing budget on the right people.

Better creative outcomes

Relevant targeting lifts creative effectiveness and platform metrics across the board.

Bad targeting = wasted spend

Irrelevant reach leads to fatigue and weak performance. Fix audience quality first.

Core Targeting Types

Platform Differences

Interest Targeting Tips

• Use platform predefined interests as a base.
• Test broader segments to let algorithms learn.
• Apply exclusions (past customers, irrelevant demos).
• Stack with lookalikes for scale + quality.

Intent Targeting Tips

1. Google In-Market segments for active researchers.
2. Custom Intent from keywords/URLs (GA4 & search terms).
3. DV360 3P intent segments for extra reach.
4. Align messaging to bottom-funnel behaviours.

Location Targeting Tips

1. Country/region/postcode/radius with bid mods by performance.
2. Use location extensions to drive foot traffic.
3. Customise creative by city/region for relevance.
4. Sync with events/weather/seasonality calendars.

Behaviour-Based Audiences

CRM & First-Party Segments

• Upload hashed email/phone; expect ~50–70% match with good data.
• Build lifecycle tiers: new lead → active → high-value → dormant → churned.
• Refresh lists every 30–60 days to avoid staleness.
• Use for remarketing and as seeds for high-quality lookalikes.

Lookalike & Similar Audiences

• Seed from converters (not generic leads), ideally 1k+ users.
• Test 1–2% (quality) vs 3–5% (scale); refresh monthly.
• Watch overlap; keep segments distinct.
• Create platform-specific variants (Meta/Google/TikTok).

Demographic Targeting Tips

• Layer age/gender carefully to maintain reach.
• LinkedIn for titles/seniority/company size (B2B precision).
• Meta for household composition proxies (parents/newlyweds/homeowners).
• Google for affinity + demo layering (YouTube/Chrome signals).

Contextual Targeting Explained

Audience Stacking

Layer interest + intent + geo for precision (balance specificity with scale).

Audience Exclusions

• Suppress converters in prospecting.
• Exclude low-quality/bounced users.
• Exclude CRM from cold campaigns.
• Document exclusions to avoid overlap errors.

Segmentation Examples (NZ Context)

Tertiary, Retail, Health, Finance, Tourism, Agriculture — build segments by recency, content consumed, and declared intent (e.g., KiwiSaver calculators, campus guides, domestic travel researchers).

Retargeting Strategies

1. Recency tiers: 7/14/30-day with tailored messaging.
2. Sequential ads: educate → product proof → convert.
3. Rotate creative: every 2–3 weeks to prevent fatigue.
4. Cap frequency: ~2–3/day, 12–15/week.
5. Cross-device consistency with device-fit formats.
6. Behavioural splits by page/category/time-on-site.

Measuring Audience Performance

• CTR/CPC and CPA/CVR by segment.
• Impression share + overlap to avoid self-competition.
• Holdouts/test-control to measure uplift.
• Frequency/recency hygiene and cross-channel comparisons.

Audience Strategy Pitfalls

• Too many micro-segments (no scale/stat-sig).
• Not refreshing lists (stale audiences).
• Over-targeting (high CPMs, limited inventory).
• No structured testing across segments.