New research shows that targeting your ideal customers is more effective for branding than going broad.

If you think targeting a broad audience for branding is cost effective, think again.

New research shows that isolating your "golden audience" -- or ideal consumer -- and then targeting campaigns specifically to that audience maximizes brand impact and increases marketing ROI.

The study, by Advertising.com, examined three advertiser campaigns (Advertiser A, Advertiser B and Advertiser C) with distinct brand-building goals: brand favorability, purchase intent and unaided awareness, respectively. For the duration of each campaign, Advertising.com measured pre- and post-optimization brand impact and marketing costs.

Advertising.com created subnets of its Web network based on the advertiser’s initial understanding of its own target audience, and then delivered the campaigns across those subnets. The company then recruited survey respondents from within each advertiser’s subnet to complete a brand-impact and audience-profile survey conducted by Dynamic Logic. Surveys featured questions designed to measure percent increase in brand impact, while defining the demographic and behavioral profiles of each respondent.

Among its golden audience, Advertiser A experienced a 17 percent increase in brand favorability, Advertiser B witnessed a 40 percent boost in purchase intent, and Advertiser C realized a 358 percent rise in unaided awareness.

The common denominator for success was in identifying the ideal consumer through brand-impact surveys, and then optimizing campaign delivery to reach these consumers efficiently. In addition to increasing brand impact for each advertiser, optimization based on audience segmentation caused significant increases in marketing ROI. Advertiser A experienced a 150 percent improvement, while Advertiser B saw a 650 percent increase in efficiency. Advertiser C realized a 47 percent increase in cost efficiency versus non-optimized delivery.

Scott Ferber, chief executive officer of Advertising.com says, “Internet advertising has long been renowned for its measurability and precision. Most often, however, these benefits are applied solely to direct-response objectives. Our research demonstrates the effectiveness of optimizing campaign delivery to achieve brand objectives as well. Real-time consumer surveying provides measurable results and increased accountability for branding campaigns, while intelligent ad placement substantially improves marketing ROI.”

To receive a copy of the complete research study, please contact Rob Leonard.