Joe Biden and Harrison Ford.
From a marketing perspective, these two individuals have the same demographic info.
Age 81, Male, White. They both have traveled on iconic aircraft.
But the difference between their purchase habits is likely wide. Targeting them successfully, especially through paid social, requires a deep understanding of audiences.
Paid social is all about audiences. Specifically for Meta ads, the difference between a high performing campaign and wasted ad spend comes down to precisely narrowing an audience down from 250 million to a few thousand – and ensuring accuracy when doing so.
That’s easier said than done, because while most brands understand the demographics of their shoppers – demographic information is far too wide of a net for an effective paid social campaign.
Add on the lack of data granularity on reports provided by Meta, and brands frequently struggle to craft highly targeted paid social campaigns.
But one of the benefits of a cross-channel retail media strategy is leveraging insights from one channel to inform another – and that’s exactly why Quartile uses Amazon Marketing Cloud data to drive successful paid social campaigns.
Let’s dig into why, how, and the results.
The Importance of Audiences in Paid Social
The most effective Paid Social ads feel personalized. They fit seamlessly into a shopper’s social media feed, recommending products and brands that are at home amongst the accounts they already follow.
That’s only possible with effective audience targeting. While most brands understand their customers on a demographic level, i.e. female, ages 25-40, urban professionals – this doesn’t consider their preferences, interests, and the wide diversity of shopper for most products.
For impactful paid social ads, we need to focus on interests, behaviors, and intent.
Interests tell us what people care about — whether it's outdoor sports, technology, fashion, or even eco-friendly products.
Behavioral data shows how customers interact with brands on social media.
And intent, the holy grail, shows when someone is actively researching or about to purchase a product.
These data points, combined, give a much clearer picture of who your audience truly is – evolving a demographic audience to a true persona.
They reveal what inspires someone to act, and more importantly, they guide brands toward more effective, personalized paid social strategies.
Using Amazon Marketing Cloud to Build Better Meta Audiences
One of the primary challenges brands face on Meta is identifying highly profitable audiences that align with their advertising goals.
Unlike marketplace platforms like Amazon, which provide more granular audience performance data through tools like Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) for DSP ads, Meta’s advertising platform only includes audience types and demographics – but lacks detailed insights around interests.
This limitation complicates the task of creating highly targeted personas that encompass what a shopper cares about, making it difficult for advertisers to identify the most effective audience groups.
“As a cross-channel platform, we had the scope of data necessary to craft true personas. By combining the expertise of our strategists, and our advanced AI capabilities – we knew we could build something innovative for paid social audiences.” - Luca Dias, Supervisor, Paid Social, Quartile
Our paid social experts crafted a new approach, leveraging the customer data we had available through AMC to answer the all-important question: What are the true interests of shoppers?
We built an innovative persona model that introduced a sophisticated approach to audience segmentation on both Meta and DSP platforms. This strategy prioritized data-driven insights around interests, behavior, and intent over traditional, generalized audience attributes -- allowing for more strategic decision-making.
We focused on identifying specific niches and uncovering previously unidentified target groups through refined segmentation. Instead of using a single, broad native audience from DSP or Meta, we implemented a strategy that combined multiple audience segments using an “AND” rule, creating intersected audiences that captured overlapping interests.
This method created a more targeted approach, enhancing campaign efficiency and optimizing the allocated budget.
That’s how we were able to create audiences that look more like “Plant Powered Alternative Seeker” instead of “Men, age 25-35 in metro area”.
The strategy provided flexibility for the implementing strategist, enabling adjustments to audience size and structure in line with budget constraints and campaign objectives.
The Results: Increased ROAS, Lower CPA, and More
We started leveraging this strategy with a group of beta customers to prove our hypothesis.
These initial paid social campaigns were executed across all Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, ensuring comprehensive coverage of our target audiences. Campaigns were conducted over a month or more to allow sufficient time to gather actionable data and optimize accordingly.
The results were staggering and exceeded customer expectations.
One customer, an organic and natural foods brand, saw their conversion rate increase by 15%, their Cost Per Action (CPA) lower by 17%, their Cost per 1,000 Impressions (CPM) lower by 10% -- and their Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) increased by 20%.
Another customer, a pro audio and equipment brand, saw their conversion rate increase by 101% and their ROAS increase by 18%. One customer, a luxury pajamas brand, even saw their Average Order Value (AOV) improve by 24%.
But one home goods brand enjoyed the most remarkable results of all initial customers. Their conversion rate for one targeted audience improved from 5.80% to 41.11%. More staggering was their ROAS, that increased by 745%.
Yes, you read that number right. They saw a 745% increase in ROAS vs. their previous audience built with just demographic information.
“We’re giving our clients the most personalized understanding of their audience possible, driven by cutting-edge AI, to build successful paid social campaigns. It’s a game-changer for how we deliver results on Meta’s channels.” - Luca Dias, Supervisor, Paid Social, Quartile
Better, more personalized audiences – along with the right ad creative – make paid social campaigns more successful.
Now that we’ve proven this process with customers across various sizes and segments, our strategists will start leveraging it with more customers for Q4 and beyond.
Interested in maximizing the potential of paid social? Speak to your account manager or reach out to Quartile today!
