Targeting — is the configuration of an advertising campaign that determines which audience will see the ad.
Simply put, targeting helps avoid showing ads to everyone and instead select users based on specific characteristics: age, gender, interests, location, behavior, and other parameters. For example, an online course ad can be shown to people of a certain age who are interested in design and live in a specific city.
How targeting works
When launching an advertising campaign, the media buyer sets the audience parameters, after which the advertising platform selects users who match them. The more accurately the audience is selected, the fewer irrelevant impressions and clicks the ad receives.
In traffic arbitrage, several targeting options are usually tested and the results are compared. For example, you can separately test different age groups, interests, or cities and see where you get more conversions at the same traffic cost.
What types of targeting are there
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Geographic — selecting the country, region, or city where the target audience is located.
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Demographic — targeting by age, gender, language, and other characteristics.
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Interest-based — showing ads to users who are interested in certain topics, products, or categories.
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Behavioral — targeting based on user actions, such as website visits, interactions with ads, or purchases.
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Search — showing ads to people who enter specific queries into a search engine.
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Retargeting — showing ads again to users who have already interacted with a website, ad, or other content.
Targeting in traffic arbitrage
For an affiliate marketer, targeting — is one of the ways to find an audience that is more likely to be interested in the offer and complete the target action.
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Finding the target audience: you can select people who may be interested in the offer and avoid wasting impressions on those for whom it is not relevant.
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Testing: you can test several audience options and see which one generates more clicks and conversions.
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Scaling: if an audience responds well to the ads, you can increase the traffic volume for it.
Important: depending on the advertising platform, targeting can be configured manually or audience selection can be left to the algorithms. In automatic mode, the platform itself finds users who are more likely to be interested in the advertising offer.
