{"id":48245,"date":"2022-11-04T16:08:41","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T14:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/?p=48245"},"modified":"2025-11-26T15:21:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T13:21:14","slug":"the-value-of-precision-targeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/the-value-of-precision-targeting\/","title":{"rendered":"The Value of Precision Targeting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Value of Precision Targeting | Oxford Sa\u00efd\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hyADA-dqM0o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We live in an era of disruption in which innovation and technology have transformed the way we live and work at an unprecedented rate. In order to remain relevant, marketers need to leverage emerging technologies to meet changing consumer behaviours, improve engagement, and achieve data-driven impact. One of these technologies is precision targeting. L\u2019Or\u00e9al Professor of Marketing and Associate Dean of Research at Sa\u00efd Business School, University of Oxford, Andrew Stephen, explains how a brand can use precision targeting to navigate social media algorithms effectively and deliver its message to the right audience.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The purpose of precision targeting is to get the right content seen by the right people. You want to get your content messages, ads, and so on in front of the right people, those likely to want to engage with it, and hopefully, who are the most likely to purchase or do something else that&#8217;s commercially valuable to your business in response to that advertisement. This is why precision targeting is important.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So let&#8217;s use the analogy of a dartboard \u2013 placing ads on a social media site with two and a half million users is likely to be as accurate as playing darts blindfolded. Where your ads end up and who they&#8217;re seen by is really going to be out of your control, determined by algorithms, and is not very likely to reach the audiences who would be interested in your ad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now consider the data available on consumers, such as age, location, gender, relationship, languages, education, work, their hobbies, and interests, and so on, and so on, and so on. The opportunity that precision targeting presents, being able to target audiences who would find your ads most appealing and relevant, therefore can be built off this technology that, that knows something about people. Targeting can therefore be really broad, as something like potential customers who live in a certain country or state. Or, if you desire, you can get as specific as potential customers who live in a certain country, currently university students, have shown interest in your brand on another platform, and so on. So let&#8217;s have an example. Consider the potential that this all presents for a company that offers live acoustic bands for weddings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, using precision targeting, what would this company be able to do? Well, they&#8217;d be able to narrow down potential consumers who live in the city \u2013 where they&#8217;re based \u2013 who currently identify as being in a relationship on social media, uh, and who have liked or followed groups associated with that type of music, so live acoustic music. And so that when someone&#8217;s relationship status changes to engaged, that&#8217;s the trigger. Um, they could use precision targeting to really show a targeted advertisement at people who are therefore most likely to want the services offered by this company. So they can really get on the radar of the consumer who&#8217;s planning a wedding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The only thing to be mindful of with precision targeting though, is it can get too far. So you can, you can go too far and veer into what I call creepy territory, where you&#8217;re even risking the perception that you&#8217;re invading the privacy of potential customers. So the best practice is to narrow down your targeting, but not to be so narrow that it could feel invasive or creepy in any way that feels like a breach of privacy. The other practical reason for not going too narrow is, at the end of the day, you do need some volume in your business. So, so narrowing it down to target just one person is probably, most of the time, not going to be enough customers to sustain the business. So you do need some mass reach in there, but it doesn&#8217;t have to be the whole universe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I hope these visual analogies made the concepts of precision targeting and programmatic advertising more real and relatable. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We live in an era of disruption in which innovation and technology have transformed the way we live and work at an unprecedented rate. In order to remain relevant, marketers need to leverage emerging technologies to meet changing consumer behaviours, improve engagement, and achieve data-driven impact. One of these technologies is precision targeting. L\u2019Or\u00e9al Professor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":48235,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,117],"tags":[127,125],"article-format":[],"class_list":["post-48245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career-advice","category-market-trends","tag-career-advice","tag-marketing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.2 (Yoast SEO v26.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Value of Precision Targeting - GetSmarter Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Andrew Stephen, Programme Director of the Oxford Digital Marketing: Disruptive Strategy Programme, explains how to get optimal value from digital advertising.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/the-value-of-precision-targeting\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Value of Precision Targeting\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Andrew Stephen, Programme Director of the Oxford Digital Marketing: Disruptive Strategy Programme, explains how to get optimal value from digital advertising.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/the-value-of-precision-targeting\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"GetSmarter Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-11-04T14:08:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-11-26T13:21:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/getsmarter_the-value-of-precision-targeting_blog_1500x844.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"844\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aaminah Allie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"GetSmarter Staff\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/the-value-of-precision-targeting\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/getsmarter_the-value-of-precision-targeting_blog_1500x844.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/getsmarter_the-value-of-precision-targeting_blog_1500x844.jpg\",\"width\":1500,\"height\":844},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/the-value-of-precision-targeting\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Blog\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\"}]}]}<\/script>\n<meta property=\"og:video\" content=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hyADA-dqM0o\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:video:type\" content=\"text\/html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:video:duration\" content=\"205\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:video:width\" content=\"480\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:video:height\" content=\"270\" \/>\n<meta property=\"ya:ovs:adult\" content=\"false\" \/>\n<meta property=\"ya:ovs:upload_date\" content=\"2022-11-04T14:08:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"ya:ovs:allow_embed\" content=\"true\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Value of Precision Targeting - GetSmarter Blog","description":"Andrew Stephen, Programme Director of the Oxford Digital Marketing: Disruptive Strategy Programme, explains how to get optimal value from digital advertising.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/the-value-of-precision-targeting\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Value of Precision Targeting","og_description":"Andrew Stephen, Programme Director of the Oxford Digital Marketing: Disruptive Strategy Programme, explains how to get optimal value from digital advertising.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/the-value-of-precision-targeting\/","og_site_name":"GetSmarter Blog","article_published_time":"2022-11-04T14:08:41+00:00","article_modified_time":"2025-11-26T13:21:14+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1500,"height":844,"url":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/getsmarter_the-value-of-precision-targeting_blog_1500x844.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Aaminah Allie","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"GetSmarter Staff","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/the-value-of-precision-targeting\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/getsmarter_the-value-of-precision-targeting_blog_1500x844.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/getsmarter_the-value-of-precision-targeting_blog_1500x844.jpg","width":1500,"height":844},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/the-value-of-precision-targeting\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Blog","item":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog"}]}]},"og_video":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hyADA-dqM0o","og_video_type":"text\/html","og_video_duration":"205","og_video_width":"480","og_video_height":"270","ya_ovs_adult":"false","ya_ovs_upload_date":"2022-11-04T14:08:41+00:00","ya_ovs_allow_embed":"true"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48245"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52938,"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48245\/revisions\/52938"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48245"},{"taxonomy":"article-format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-format?post=48245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}