Executive Summary

To deliver an effective customer experience, marketers must first know who their customers and audiences are. This report focuses on how marketers identify audience segments and target groups today.

How do companies segment audiences today?

Most companies invest ample time and research into understanding their customers. And most have created broader segments or personas that the bulk of their customers can be mapped to. However, not all companies have mapped or identified these personas to segments and targets for digital and addressable media.

How are marketers identifying and targeting the right audience segments in digital and addressable media?

Marketers can use any number of data sets for their segmentation efforts. Most initially build their segments by starting with first- or third-party data, layering in added data sets as needed. The most-used data sets typically help marketers answer two core questions: Who is my audience? And how engaged is that audience with my brand today?

Shouldn’t marketers also care about how their audiences could or should engage with their brand in the future?

Absolutely. In fact, many companies increasingly rely on predictive analytics and machine learning to optimize and adjust their segmentation strategies.

WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT? This report focuses on how marketers identify and build audience segments within digital and addressable media.

KEY STAT: Investment in the tools needed to access or act on audience data is on the rise. Winterberry Group in partnership with the IAB found nearly four out of five US companies planned to increase spend on audience data and related data activation solutions this year.