Taboola offers targeting based on a variety of audience types.

One of those audience types is audience segments from Taboola's data marketplace. Targeting specific audience segments based on demographic, interest, and intent signals is a way of ensuring your content resonates with those in-market for your product, and who are most likely to engage with your ads.

This article will review how to target those audiences.

Visit our Advertiser Data Use Policy here.

How to Create Campaigns Targeting Specific Audiences

Firstly, you can apply audience targeting when creating a new campaign. Once you get to the Audience Targeting section, here you can target different marketplace audiences by either searching for the audience you're looking for or selecting audiences from the drop down list.

You will see audience segments within the data marketplace are split into Taboola 1P audiences and 3P partner audiences. 1P Taboola Audiences refer to audience segments built from Taboola first-party data - either via exclusive partnerships or contextual signals from our publisher network. It's recommended to always use Taboola 1P data when you can, however you can combine both types of data to increase your reach.

For example, if you wanted to target users between age 18-24, by selecting this group you would target all segments related to these ages. 

When targeting Marketplace audiences, by default these audiences are connected using OR logic.  You can apply AND logic targeting, meaning that you can reach users that match multiple audiences you select. For example, targeting a female gender segment AND 18-24 age segment would mean you're only targeting females within the ages of 18-24. Note that connecting multiple audiences will always narrow your reach.

Exploring Potential Audience Segments

If you're currently running broad targeted campaigns (also known as Run of Network), the Audience Exploration tab in Taboola Ads offers valuable insights into engaged and converting audiences. You can leverage these insights to create campaigns targeting high-performing audiences.

For more details on how to use the Audience Exploration report, see here.

Marketplace Audiences Best Practices

• When targeting age and gender demographics, ensure you are leveraging Taboola's 'declared' segments for extra precision
• If using 'AND' targeting, don't overlay too many segments (5 maximum)
• If using Enhanced CPC or Fixed Bid as your chosen bidding strategy, increase your bids. As with any granular targeting functionality, focusing your campaign on a specific audience greatly reduces your potential scale. In order to maintain scale on campaigns when targeting specific audiences, it is strongly recommended to run these campaigns with a higher CPC bid than your run-of-network campaigns
• Try and segment your target audience based on shared characteristics and create separate campaigns for each audience profile with matching creatives

In general, it's recommended to keep run-of-network or broad-targeted campaigns running. One of the main benefits of keeping a broad targeted campaign running is the ability to explore potential strong performing audiences, as seen in the Audience Exploration tab. This way you can maintain your reach while continually optimizing your data-targeted campaigns.

Audiences FAQs

In which countries are audiences available?

Most of the audiences are available globally. When you set location targeting for your campaign, the available audiences for that specific country will automatically appear in the drop-down list under Marketplace Audiences.

Can I combine audiences from different data providers?

Yes. For Sponsored Content campaigns, in the marketplace audiences UI, if you select an audience from a provider that doesn’t support “multi-partner”, adding audience segments from other providers will be disabled. Vice versa, if you select an audience from a provider that does support multi-partner, providers that don’t support it will be disabled for selection.

For Video campaigns, you can target multiple segments from the below providers within a single campaign:

• Bombora
• Connexity
• Neustar
• Specialist Marketing Services
• WeatherAlpha
• Taboola
• Webbula

How do I know the size of the segment I'm targeting?

In the Audience Targeting section of Edit Campaign in Taboola Ads, you can view the size of your marketplace audiences (third party data and Taboola Audiences) on Sponsored Content campaigns. The Audience Size shows the estimated number of people in an audience monthly, averaged over the last 30 days. The size will appear next to the provider name as seen below. The estimated size includes the selected countries, but does not include other campaign restrictions such as blocked publishers, platform etc.