Data Segments
Data segmentation refers to the categorization of audiences based on a wide range of factors such as behavior, demographics, location, and more. By leveraging these data segments, advertisers can deliver highly targeted ads to specific groups of consumers, improving the efficiency of ad spend, boosting engagement, and increasing conversion rates.
Turn audience signals into precise targeting
Data used in programmatic advertising falls into two primary categories: First-Party Data and Third-Party Data. Both of these are crucial for targeting and optimizing campaigns.
First-party and third-party data
Each data type plays a different role in audience development, campaign targeting, and media optimization.
First-Party Data
First-party data is the data that an advertiser or company directly collects from their own audience. It’s typically gathered through interactions on their website, apps, or through other owned platforms. This data is highly valuable because it’s specific, reliable, and often directly tied to the behavior and preferences of users who are already familiar with the brand.
Examples of First-Party Data
- Website Behavior Data Information on user activities such as what pages they visited, time spent on each page, products they viewed, or whether they added items to their shopping cart.
- Customer Data Information gathered from existing customers, including purchase history, customer support interactions, email engagement, and loyalty program data.
- Email Subscriptions & CRM Data Customer names, emails, phone numbers, demographic details, etc., collected from newsletter sign-ups, subscriptions, and direct customer interactions.
- Mobile App Data Data on how users interact with mobile applications, including app downloads, in-app purchases, session length, and features used.
- Survey or Poll Data Responses collected directly from users, such as preferences, opinions, or product feedback.
Benefits of First-Party Data
- Accuracy and Relevance Since it’s collected directly from users who interact with the brand, it is highly accurate and relevant for personalization.
- Control and Privacy Brands have full control over how this data is collected and used, ensuring better compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR or CCPA.
- Cost-Effective First-party data doesn’t require purchasing from external providers, making it an affordable source for targeting.
Third-Party Data
Third-party data is collected and sold by external organizations or data providers. These data providers track consumer behavior across various websites, apps, social media platforms, and even offline behaviors. This data is aggregated and then sold to advertisers, giving them access to a much broader pool of users who might not yet have interacted with the brand.
Examples of Third-Party Data
- Demographic Data Age, gender, income, education level, marital status, and occupation.
- Psychographic Data Interests, hobbies, values, lifestyle choices, and buying behaviors.
- Geographic Data Location data such as city, state, country, and even specific regions or neighborhoods.
- Behavioral Data Purchase behavior, browsing habits, device usage, content consumption preferences, and media habits.
- Intent Data Data based on a user’s actions that indicate purchase intent, such as recent searches or recent product or service interactions.
- Industry or Affinity Data Information collected from specific verticals or categories like automotive, healthcare, sports, and fashion.
Benefits of Third-Party Data
- Broader Audience Reach Third-party data allows advertisers to extend their targeting beyond their existing customer base, enabling them to reach new prospects with similar characteristics.
- Advanced Segmentation Advertisers can access highly specialized and segmented data for precision targeting.
- Time-Saving It saves the time and effort needed to gather and clean large datasets internally.
Examples of Third-Party Data Providers
External providers offer different combinations of consumer information, audience measurement, identity resolution, and targeting segments.
Experian
Provides consumer demographic, behavioral, and transaction data.
Acxiom
Specializes in data that covers a range of consumer behaviors, purchase history, and online interactions.
Nielsen
Offers insights on consumer behavior, media consumption, and audience measurement.
LiveRamp
Provides identity resolution and audience segments to enhance targeting.
A major part of the programmatic ecosystem
Data is a multi-billion-dollar industry in the programmatic advertising space. Companies and data providers buy and sell vast amounts of data on a daily basis, fueling the targeted advertising ecosystem.
Size of the Data Market
The global data market is massive. For instance, data-driven advertising in the U.S. alone was worth over $200 billion in recent years.
Premium Data
Advertisers often seek premium data, which is high-quality, accurate, and fresh. Access to this data is crucial for ensuring ads are reaching the right audience and driving conversions. The quality of data determines how effective a campaign will be in terms of ROI.
Data Providers and DMPs
In the programmatic space, data can be purchased directly from data providers like Experian or through Data Management Platforms (DMPs), which aggregate and sell data from multiple sources. These platforms help advertisers access comprehensive audience profiles and enhance targeting for various types of media, such as display ads, video ads, or even CTV (connected TV).
Clean data produces more reliable targeting
Data scrubbing (or data cleansing) refers to the process of cleaning and refining data to ensure that it’s accurate, complete, and free from errors or inconsistencies. This is essential because:
Eliminates Redundant Data
Scrubbing ensures that duplicated or outdated data isn’t used, which can lead to poor targeting and wasteful spending.
Improves Data Quality
Clean data leads to more precise targeting, helping advertisers avoid serving ads to non-relevant or low-quality audiences.
Prevents Privacy Issues
By removing invalid or incorrect data, brands can reduce the risk of violating privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA.
Activate audience data across programmatic media
Once data segments are created, they can be leveraged across multiple programmatic channels. Here’s how data segments can enhance campaigns across various types of media:
Display Advertising
Video Advertising
Connected TV (CTV) / Over-The-Top (OTT) Advertising
Audio Advertising (e.g., Streaming Services)
Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH) Advertising
Data segmentation is the backbone of effective targeting
By leveraging first-party data (directly collected from your audience) and third-party data (gathered from external providers), advertisers can fine-tune their campaigns across various platforms, ensuring more precise targeting, better engagement, and higher ROI.
Access to premium data providers and the ability to scrub data to ensure accuracy are crucial in maximizing the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Whether running campaigns across display, video, CTV/OTT, audio, or digital out-of-home (DOOH) media, using refined and targeted data segments is key to reaching the right audience, at the right time, with the right message.
Ready to put your audience data to work?
Crosstide Media can help develop refined data segments and activate them across display, video, CTV/OTT, audio, and digital out-of-home campaigns.
- ✓Define high-value audiences
- ✓Combine accurate targeting signals
- ✓Activate across premium media channels
- ✓Improve relevance and campaign ROI