A New Way to Find Prospects Where They Are, Not Where You Think They Might Be
At a critical time for digital marketing, Audience Extension extends reach & optimizes spending.
By Rachel Flow, Custom Digital Sales Manager, Informa Markets – Engineering
Online advertising is experiencing a critical and disruptive moment . Internet cookies based on third-party data are steadily being eliminated. There are good reasons for the demise of this longstanding web advertising tool, but marketers are now forced to find new, effective ways to reach their audiences.
Why does this matter to you as a B2B marketer? A brief rundown will explain what first-, second-, and third-party data mean — from an advertiser’s perspective — to help you understand what’s coming next:
- First-party customer data is information given directly to you from your customers and others who volunteer information. You own the data, but it’s mainly limited to contacts you already know such as newsletter subscribers, trade show visitors, and new leads from campaigns to new audiences (e.g. second-party data sources).
- Second-party data comes from outside partners such as our organization who can help expand your reach to prospects not in your database. Through campaigns, greater awareness, and engagement, you gain the potential to convert these prospects into first-party contacts.
- Third-party data comes from parties who collect data from web users and use it to make claims of audience reach without consent or verification. Privacy, reliability, and related concerns led to its being eliminated from ads on Apple and Firefox browsers. Google has begun following suit with a complete purge or “depreciation” planned for completion in 2025.
The internet is shifting to more reliable and trusted tactics that will take time to fully implement and master. Over the last few years, however, a new strategy has emerged to bypass third-party cookies and is well suited for B2B advertisers.
Audience Extension provides a here-now solution:
A digital advertising strategy called Audience Engagement is revolutionizing digital advertising amid high costs and important changes happening across the digital marketing world. The objectives for audience engagement are to extend the awareness, reach, credibility, and engagement touchpoints of your brand.
This strategy allows us to leverage our first-party consented audience data to target your specified audience to reach them at the locations they visit on the internet. The objectives are to extend your reach and the benefits are many, including these:
- Maximizing the impact of your campaigns to increase brand awareness, visibility, and the likelihood of direct engagement.
- Improving media cost-efficiency by preventing ads showing to non-targets. Adding value and awareness by promoting consistent messaging and brand experience across locations related to their work — or life outside of work.
What’s different about this new strategy?
Traditional web ads continue to be beneficial for reaching your target market. Audience Extension represents a departure in that it’s less of an ad buy and more of a data-driven service. Instead of blasting your ad to all who visit a website, you can customize the audience without wasting resources to reach those not on your marketing radar.
This is a major refinement that deploys advertising dollars to just the right people and gives you more chances to reach prospects in more places and contexts.
