Pre-built vs. Custom Audiences: What is Best for You?

As digital marketers and advertisers know, effective audience targeting can make or break your campaigns. With the right audience, brands can spark more engagement, stretch their ad dollars, and maximize return on investment (ROI). However, as marketers strive to connect with their ideal customers, they face a crucial targeting decision: Should they rely on Pre-built audiences or invest in Custom Built audiences that cater specifically to their campaigns’ needs?

Let’s decide together. At Dstillery, we offer advanced audience targeting solutions built using patented AI technology. In this blog, we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of our Pre-built and Custom audiences, so you can decide which option will give your campaigns the edge they need. With the right insights, you’ll be ready to make smart moves that drive results and perfectly align with your unique campaign goals.

Understanding Audience Targeting

What is audience targeting and why does it matter? Audience targeting is the marketing practice of identifying and segmenting specific groups of consumers to deliver personalized messages. It’s a vital component in the success of any digital marketing campaign – getting your ads in front of the right people who are most likely to engage with your brand.

In today’s data-driven world, the ability to refine your audience based on demographics, behavior, and interests is more powerful than ever. Whether you’re using Pre-built or Custom Built solutions, when you hit the mark with your targeting, you’ll see increased conversions, stronger customer relationships, and a much smarter use of your ad dollars.

Creating a custom audience is where the magic happens. Marketers often utilize data sources like first-party data from CRM databases, website traffic, or third-party data to build audiences that target specific customer personas. The result? You get precise and effective communication with the people who matter most to your brand.

What Are Dstillery’s Pre-built Audiences?

Pre-built audiences are Dstillery’s off-the-shelf audiences, powered by behavioral, demographic, search-based, and partner data. These audiences are high-performing, ready-to-activate, and proven to drive qualified reach.

Advantages of Pre-built Audiences
Convenience: You can easily select from a variety of predefined audience categories. Click here to browse Dstillery’s library of over 15,000 Pre-built audience segments.

Speed: All Pre-built audiences are available for immediate activation, allowing you to launch campaigns quickly and seamlessly.

If you’re launching upper-funnel digital campaigns optimized for driving reach or building brand awareness, Pre-built audiences are for you. Pre-built audiences are ideal for broad brand awareness campaigns or testing new markets. On the flip side, they may not deliver the same engagement when your target market is niche or you’re looking to optimize for lower-funnel KPIs like conversions.

What Are Custom Built Audiences?

Custom Built audiences are tailored to meet the unique needs of your organization. Built primarily using first-party data, these audiences let you create highly targeted segments based on specific behaviors, preferences, and demographics.

The process of creating these custom audiences is all about leveraging data to craft an audience that closely matches your ideal customer profile. Whether you’re using custom audience targeting for healthcare, retail, or B2B campaigns, this personalized approach ensures that your ads land in front of the right people.

Advantages of Custom Built Audience

Precision Targeting: Custom audiences allow you to focus on highly specific segments, improving the relevancy of your ads.

Personalization: You can tailor your ad messaging to resonate with your audience’s needs and interests, increasing engagement.

Better Performance: With precise targeting and personalized content, custom audiences can lead to higher conversion rates and a better ROI.

However, there are some challenges. Building a custom audience takes time, resources, and access to reliable data. Additionally, if not managed carefully, custom audiences could get a bit too narrow, which means less reach and ad fatigue. 

But don’t worry – when you team up with Dstillery, your Custom Built audiences are refreshed every 24 hours, so you’ll always have fresh audiences across the flight of your entire campaign. Our experts will launch and optimize your campaigns to help you meet and exceed your KPIs.

Discover our recent success with advertising agencies Tombras and Sokal where our custom audiences generated an 88% and 75% better CPM against client benchmarks, respectively. 

Key Factors to Consider When Choosing Between Pre-built and Custom Built Audiences

Choosing between Pre-built and Custom Built audiences depends largely on your business goals, resources, and the type of campaign you want to run. Here are some factors to consider when deciding which option is best for you:

For more guidance on audience selection, read about our Custom Built audiences here and our Pre-built audiences here.

Elevate Your Campaigns with Custom AI Audience Targeting

Both Pre-built and Custom Built audiences are proven highly effective in a successful advertising campaign strategy. The key is understanding which solution aligns with your campaign goals, budget, and data availability. By understanding the differences between the two audience types, you can ensure that your advertising campaigns are set up for success.

Ready to transform your audience targeting strategy? Let’s collaborate.