RTL Group-owned media sales house RTL AdAlliance has announced ‘Smart Demographics’, a new demographic targeting capability which sits within its wider ‘Smart Audiences’ product. Smart Demographics will enable advertisers buying across AdAlliance’s portfolio, which covers digital video and CTV inventory across a range of European broadcasters, to target demographic groups in a consistent manner.
Smart Audiences draws on a range of data sources available to RTL AdAlliance, including broadcast data, geographic data, addressable data, and contextual data, alongside contributions from third-party partners like DoubleVerify and AGF. The company then uses these data stories to create audience segments which advertisers can target.
A lot of this has so far been affinity based, through RTL AdAlliance’s Smart Affinities product. These segments let advertisers target interest-based personas based on categories like, technology, DIY, and sports. With Smart Demographics, the company is rolling out socio-demographic targeting segments based on its datasets. Advertisers can target based on age group, gender, life stage, financial status, or home ownership. And these categories are consistent across the range of inventory types and media owners covered by RTL AdAlliance.
Back to basics
Demographic targeting is obviously well established in the traditional TV world, and many broadcasters are working to establish more advanced targeting capabilities (like RTL AdAlliance’s Smart Affinities). But the company says the release of Smart Demographics plays into buyers’ need for reliable data sets in a wider context of signal loss.
With the impending deprecation of third-party cookies on Google’s Chrome browser, and wider privacy pushes from tech companies and regulators alike, it’s increasingly difficult for buyers to access reliable targeting even for fairly basic traits, like demographics. RTL AdAlliance says this new product, which it says enables reliable demographic targeting across its range of digital inventory, plays into this trend.
“RTL AdAlliance offers one unified solution for all accessible markets, which is available on all devices and media types,” said David Broich, head of data and audiences at RTL AdAlliance. “Thus, we offer a simple, privacy safe and future proof product for our advertisers to reach their audience.”
The company added that it is continuing to add new data sources to grow out the breath and reliability of its targeting data.
