Marketers Struggle To Reach Ideal Customers Through Media Plans
Marketers have detailed customer personas, but media plans often fail to accurately target them, according to AdExchanger. This discrepancy matters because it affects campaign effectiveness and return on investment.
Original reporting · adexchanger.com
Original: “You Know Your Ideal Customer. But Can Your Media Plan Actually Reach Them?”
Read “You Know Your Ideal Customer. But Can Your Media Plan Actually Reach Them?” at AdExchanger →
How this was written. Awesome B2B wrote this article with a language model from AdExchanger’s reporting (model: @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast); it describes that reporting rather than adding to it. The original, linked above, is the full story.
Key points from AdExchanger’s report
- Marketers have detailed customer personas, but media plans often fail to accurately target them.
- Media buying translation can lead to a loss of detail and discrepancy between the original persona and the actual media buy.
- Declared data can be used to create addressable audiences and improve media activation.
Marketers today have rich customer personas that include attitudes, motivations, and preferences, but these details get lost in media buying translation.
Media buyers must turn personas into targetable attributes, which can be challenging, especially when the persona is highly specific.
Segmentation research is a significant investment, and marketers want their media buys to match their target audiences.
The process of translating a persona into a media plan involves multiple handoffs, from consumer insights to marketing to media teams, and each step can lead to a loss of detail.
Media teams optimize campaigns to the nearest match, but brand and insights teams may not be aware of the discrepancy between the original persona and the actual media buy.
Media buying focuses on observable behaviors, but marketers already know the underlying motivations and attitudes of their target customers through research.
Consumer insights teams have spent decades collecting declared data, which can be used to create addressable audiences and improve media activation.
Using consented research panels and privacy-safe identity matching, marketers can activate audiences built from consumers who have declared specific characteristics.
Declared data can complement behavioral and transactional signals, allowing marketers to target the right people and optimize campaigns more effectively. This article is based on reporting by AdExchanger.
Questions and answers
Why do marketers struggle to reach their ideal customers through media plans?
Marketers struggle to reach their ideal customers because the process of translating a persona into a media plan involves multiple handoffs and can lead to a loss of detail.
What is declared data and how can it be used in media activation?
Declared data is information collected directly from consumers, and it can be used to create addressable audiences and improve media activation by complementing behavioral and transactional signals.
How can marketers improve their media buying and targeting?
Marketers can improve their media buying and targeting by using declared data and consented research panels to create addressable audiences and optimize campaigns more effectively.
