Audience and targeting

Different types of targeting

There are about five trillion varieties of targeting currently on the market (give or take a few), but they all fall into two categories: inventory targeting and user targeting.

 

Inventory targeting
With inventory targeting, you’re choosing to run your ad on certain types of sites.

  • Site content. Place your ad on sites with a specific type of content, like finance, autos or entertainment.
  • Demographic. Place your ad on sites frequented by specific demographic groups. Here’s how the process works: A network collects data on what kind of consumers visit each of its sites. Using this data, the network can organize its sites into demographic groups. For example, the network might create a group of sites visited most frequently by women, by Hispanics, by people age 18-24, by people who earn $50K to $75K a year, and so on. When you target by demographic index, you’re choosing which of these groups of sites you want your ad to run on.

User targeting
Most networks, including Advertising.com, look at IP or cookie data to determine if a user is part of a specific demographic or has demonstrated a particular online behavior, such as shopping for a car, browsing cooking sites, and so on. With user targeting, you reach those consumers directly, regardless of the sites they happen to be visiting. Your audience is pre-qualified.

  • Behavioral targeting. Reach consumers who have demonstrated specific interests online; examples include auto intenders, apparel shoppers and moviegoers.
  • Retargeting. Serve ads to people who have previously visited your site. (Read more in "The AOL Way, LeadBack")
  • Dayparting. Reach consumers at a certain time and/or day of the week.
  • Geographic. Reach consumers in specific geographical locations.

 

Next in Audience and targeting: Advertising.com targeting