Reach the Right People With Digital Ad Targeting for PSAs

For every Public Service Announcement you make, you have an audience in mind. Maybe it’s veterans, parents of teenagers, or Spanish-speaking Americans. Whoever you’re trying to reach, it’s vital that they get your message. While broadcast PSAs offer broad distribution, allowing you to reach a wide range of people, digital ad targeting can ensure that your announcement reaches the specific people who need it most.

Here’s a closer look at how digital ad targeting works, and why we at Connect360 recommend combining traditional media placements with digital ads for maximum audience impact.

How Digital Ad Targeting Works

Digital advertising is any advertising that occurs on a digital platform such as connected TV (CTV), social media, mobile phone apps, streaming audio, search engines and shopping sites.

Digital ads can be highly targeted because the information that digital platforms have about their audience is usually detailed. While a TV station may be able to make some general assumptions about audience demographics, digital platforms have detailed information about specific users.

This is because digital platforms tend to be more interactive. Viewers on YouTube, Instagram Reels or Hulu, choose what they want to watch. On Facebook, Google, or Prime video, their user profile may include interests, shopping history, and parental status. In some cases, the information from multiple websites is combined into a broader user profile that can inform ad targeting.

User profiles are based on both user self-reporting and user behavior as recorded by the platform. With more information to work with, advertisers are able to target more granularly. Instead of trying to reach women in Ohio, they can reach women in Ohio with a bachelor’s degree or above who have no children and at least one dog.

Defining a Target Audience Profile

Digital advertising works best when you have a clear and specific target audience. When we take on a new digital advertising client, we work with them to identify and clarify the group they hope to target. Here are a few potential factors to consider when defining your audience target:

• Basic demographics: age, race, cultural background, gender identity
• Geography: by state or region
• Parental status
• Level of Education
• Employment: status, industry, job title
• Interests: hobbies, politics, topics of interest
• Lifestyle: spending habits, travel, income
• Primary language
• Behavior: shopping, sites visited, viewing habits

It’s likely that you gathered some or all of this information when you were first making your PSA. Now it can help you make sure that the people you made the video for actually get to see it.

Methods for Digital Ad Targeting

Once you have your digital audience profile, you can start choosing platforms. Different platforms offer different opportunities for audience targeting based on the information they have about their users. Here are three real examples of how we used specific methods of digital ad targeting for our clients.

● Reach BIPOC and Spanish-Language Audiences On Streaming Platforms

Television and audio streaming platforms often have detailed information about their viewers and listeners. This allows advertisers to more finely tune their targeting. For example, one client had an important message to share with parents of children between the ages of 12 and 25. This message was particularly important for BIPOC parents.

With thoughtful digital targeting, we were able to deliver them more than 1.2 million video views with nearly 50% of those views coming from a BIPOC audience. They saw similar results on streaming audio channels like Pandora, Spotify and iHeart Radio.

● Pre-Qualifying Surveys on Mobile Apps

Many people play mobile games or use mobile apps that have built in advertising. The popularity of mobile games makes in-app advertising a useful way to reach specific target audiences. You can even use their built-in technology to further refine your targeting.

One client was trying to share a health awareness message with a target audience who was likely to have a specific, underdiagnosed condition. They applied all the usual targeting filters: demographics, location, etc., then used a screening question to increase the odds that the people filling out their yearly survey were people who were most likely experiencing that condition.

● Shopping Habits Refine Ad Targeting on Amazon and Beyond

On media platforms owned by retail sites like Amazon, you can use viewer shopping habits to find your target audience. Amazon uses data gathered on their retail site to help determine the ads that users see on IMDB, Fire TV, Twitch, and Amazon Prime Video.

For example, one of our clients had created a PSA about Autism research. We used Amazon’s Audience info to target women and moms aged 25-54 and young adults with autism aged 18-25, who had recently shopped for autism-related products. This detailed targeting increased the chances that the PSA would be seen by interested people who needed that information.

Balancing Digital and Traditional Advertising

This increased targeting comes at a cost – literally. While broadcast stations often donate unused airtime, allowing nonprofits to share their PSAs for free, you’ll pay for most digital advertising placements. Yet, the opportunity to reach a specific, highly targeted audience is often worth the cost.

We recommend that clients supplement their wide-ranging broadcast PSAs with more targeted digital advertising campaigns. This gives clients the best of both worlds, wide awareness and the ability to reach a specific audience.

The granular detail that makes hyper-targeting possible also makes digital ad results reporting more useful. We help customers track results through custom ad links, pixel tracking, and platform-based metrics. With this detailed information organized into clear and actionable reports by our ads experts, our clients make informed decisions about their advertising investment.

For help planning, targeting, and tracking your digital advertising campaigns, contact our digital media marketing team (Julie Ellman [email protected] or Chelsea Olsen [email protected]). Our results-driven marketing strategies help build your brand, increase website traffic, and boost conversions.

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