Marketers across various industries face similar challenges in understanding and targeting their audiences. Ad fatigue in a crowded digital market affects every industry, and typical search and social channels aren’t bringing the returns they used to. Performance marketers have to rethink how they’ll find the right users, and where they should allocate budget to adapt to new practices.

Platforms like Realize are built for this new approach. If you’re already using Realize, you’ve probably explored its audience segmentation capabilities: These allow marketers to create high-performance segments by utilizing its AI-powered Predictive Audience feature alongside strategic manual targeting. Once you add your company’s first-party conversion data, you can build segments that attract the high-intent users you need to meet your goals faster and with improved cost per acquisition (CPA).

General Audience Segmentation Tips

As with any ad platform, Realize requires some time for the algorithm to train on your particular market and goals to optimize recommendations accordingly. These data-driven strategies can help as you’re getting started, whatever your industry:

• Start with a strategic test period to gather crucial data.
• Prioritize a wider audience to ensure sufficient scale.
• Use robust tracking and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to automate and optimize campaigns.

Once you’ve moved through the test period, you can expect improved performance and have a clear justification for scaling. Your confidence in moving forward will be backed by the data you’ve gathered.

Again, while these tips are useful regardless of your industry, I’ve also consulted multiple Realize experts to capture some common challenges and guidance in a few specific sectors: financial, real estate, housing for people with disabilities, e-commerce, and education. You’ll hear from these experts in each of those areas on what they’ve seen work best, and get their specific advice to inform your own performance marketing strategies.

Tips for Financial Sector Audience Segmentation

Performance marketers in the financial sector can consider capitalizing on a few current trends. “Anything referencing AI and how it’s changing investments is big right now,” says Jeremy Bade, advertising sales manager, growth, at Taboola. “Saving money is always a big topic, but especially now with the economy, more people are looking for ways to save. Even with offers like car warranties, we’re seeing the saving money angle as a very effective, evergreen angle.”

In terms of connecting with your audience, Bade advises that, “You need to give your audience something before asking for information or pushing a sale. I see the most success with headlines and images that seem like a leg up in our economy. For investing, or anything that’s referencing the future, AI, past large financial events, and calling out certain age groups has done well.”

As an example, Bade shares that one of his clients is a lender with a HELOC offer, looking to make an impact in the current sea of lenders. “They’ve followed best practices and have continually hit better CPAs than Google or Meta,” he says. “With some small tweaks to their current campaigns, they could hit even better CPAs. They’re using dynamic keyword insertions and calling out homeowners to ensure they have high intent and relevant clicks.”

Challenges for Marketers

Limited budgets and high expectations: Marketers in financial services often use Taboola to reach a target demographic of pre-retirees and retirees with a significant amount of investable assets, but their campaign budgets are often very small.

Scaling from narrow targeting: Starting a campaign with a specific, local audience can severely limit the data collected, making it difficult to scale and optimize performance.

Recommendations

Start with a wider geographic net: Instead of a hyper-local campaign, launch at a statewide level. This ensures a broad reach, allowing the Realize algorithm to collect enough data points to identify which sub-segments are performing best.

Use creative as the primary filter: Initial ad creative should be designed to attract the specific audience, e.g., by featuring content about retirement or tax planning. This helps pre-qualify the audience before they even click.

Leverage dynamic value optimization: Implement server-to-server (S2S) tracking to pass back the monetary value of each conversion. This allows Realize’s “max value” bidding strategy to optimize not just for the number of leads, but for the most valuable ones.

Expected Outcomes

Data-driven scalability: The initial broad campaigns will provide the necessary data to intelligently scale the campaign.

Improved lead quality: By optimizing for value, the campaign will attract higher-quality leads, reducing the effort and cost of nurturing them into paying clients.

Halo effect: By reaching people on the open web, the campaigns will also positively impact performance on other channels like Google and social media.

Tips for Real Estate Audience Segmentation

“In my experience, having analyzed effective content distribution across native platforms like Taboola, the key strategy is always to prioritize educational content with real-life testimonials and a strong CTA to capture leads early in the funnel,” says Chloe Tai, advertising sales manager at Taboola.

Challenges for Marketers

Programmatic burnout: The client’s customers have had negative experiences with programmatic advertising in the past and are highly skeptical of the channel.

Long conversion cycles: The path from lead to sale in real estate can take months or years, making it difficult to demonstrate performance and justify ad spend in the short term.

Prove value on a tight budget: The client needs to see results from a small initial test budget.

Recommendations

Start broad with whitelisting: The campaign should begin with a broad reach but be immediately whitelisted to ensure ads only appear on high-quality, trusted news and finance sites. This counters the client’s previous negative experiences.

Use the Audience Exploration tool: After the initial learning phase, use Realize’s Audience Exploration tool to identify the top-performing audiences that the client may not have considered.

Track the full funnel: Implement tracking for every conversion point, from the initial lead form fill to a phone call or appointment booking. This allows you to prove the campaign’s value even if a final sale is months away.

Below, you’ll find Tai’s explanation of how you should think about the funnel, as well as other invaluable tips from her on getting the most out of your campaign:

Top-of-Funnel: Awareness/Education

Content: Evergreen, educational, and intriguing articles.

Examples:

• “5 Hot Neighborhoods in [City] Poised for 20% Growth in 2026”
• “Why Your Property Tax Bill Is Changing (And What to Do About It)”
• “The Ultimate Checklist for First-Time Homebuyers in [Region]”

Goal: High click-through rate (CTR) and an engaged reader (high time-on-site).

Middle-of-Funnel: Consideration/Lead Capture

Content: Specific, high-value lead magnets that require a form-fill (gated content).

Examples:

• “Download the Full 2024 Local Market Investment Report”
• “Access Exclusive Floor Plans for The [Project Name] Development.”

Goal: Optimize for cost per lead (CPL).

Bottom-of-Funnel: Conversion/Action

Content: Headlines and images should look more like news articles than banner ads. Use numbered lists, question headlines, or shocking statistics.

Examples:

• Bad Headline: “Buy a Condo at The Riverwalk Now and Save!”
• Good Headline: “The Unexpected Amenity Driving Up [City] Condo Prices”

Goal: Conversion.

Getting the Most From Your Campaign

Use people in images: Images featuring people, especially looking directly at the camera, tend to perform exceptionally well on native platforms. Use authentic, high-quality images that don’t look like stock photography.

Motion ads: Utilize Taboola’s Motion Ads (short, looping videos/GIFs). Real estate is highly visual, and subtle movement draws attention in a way a static image can’t, often leading to a better CTR and lower CPL/CPA.

Sequential retargeting: Set up a chain of ads with the following aim:

1. User clicks on your educational article (ToFu).
2. User is then retargeted with an ad to download a specific “Buyer’s Guide” (MoFu).
3. User who downloads the guide is then retargeted with ads showing actual listings or an offer for a “One-on-One Consultation” (BoFu).

Geo-targeting and zip code specificity: Real estate is local. You must target by highly specific demographics and geographic areas (zip code, radius around a property) to ensure you’re only paying for clicks from relevant markets.

Lookalike audiences: Upload your CRM list of past buyers and current qualified leads to Taboola. The platform’s AI can then create lookalike audiences based on that data to find new high-quality prospects.

Rigorous A/B testing: Your success hinges on testing, so try the following:

• Test multiple combinations: Test a minimum of 2-3 images with 5-10 headlines for every content piece. Taboola’s algorithms will automatically optimize delivery toward the winning combinations.
• Test landing pages: Don’t send all clicks to your home page — create dedicated, conversion-focused landing pages that mirror the headline/ad copy the user clicked on.

Expected Outcomes

Achieve desired cost per lead: The campaign will quickly achieve a healthy cost per lead (CPL) in the client’s desired range.

Build trust with data: By providing clear, data-backed reports on the quality of the leads and their progression through the funnel, you can rebuild the client’s trust in programmatic advertising.

Justify budget increases: The successful test will serve as a proof-of-concept, encouraging the client to increase their budget and shift ad spend from other channels.

Tips for Housing for Disabled People Audience Segmentation

Challenges for Marketers

Legally restricted targeting: Direct targeting of users with disabilities is not possible due to legal and privacy concerns. This makes it difficult to reach the core audience.

Audience skepticism: It isn’t always clear whether the target audience spends time on premium news sites, which are the primary publishers on the Realize platform.

Small initial budget: A small monthly budget makes it difficult to justify a larger, managed service agreement.

Recommendations

Focus on contextual and topic targeting: Instead of targeting the user directly, target the content they are consuming. For example, run ads on articles related to disability support, community resources, or accessible housing.

Use the first two weeks as a learning phase: Allocate the initial budget to a broad “prospecting” campaign. The goal is to collect data and insights on which content categories and publishers deliver the best results, rather than to achieve immediate conversions.

Implement the pixel for retargeting: Ensure the Taboola pixel is implemented immediately. The data from the prospecting phase will build a retargeting audience of people who have already shown interest in the ads.

Expected Outcomes

Data-backed confidence: The initial prospecting phase will provide clear data that proves the target audience is active and engaged on the Realize network, which has alleviated the client’s skepticism.

Effective lead generation: After the learning phase, the campaign can be optimized for leads, leading to a stable and lower CPL. The retargeting campaign will then serve as a high-performing channel for driving conversions.

Path to growth: By demonstrating success on a small scale, the client will be more likely to increase their budget and move to a managed service, which offers access to exclusive, premium inventory.

Tips for E-commerce Segmentation Success

Performance marketers for e-commerce brands can use Realize in many ways, from reporting all the way to testing creatives, says Taboola advertising manager Julius Dunkin.

“The secret is to educate and inform on your product, then lead prospects to the purchase,” Dunkin says. “Any additional actions, like driving them to the company home page or blog, lowers the potential for conversion.”

So, make sure you have concise funnels and landing pages, he advises, adding that, “E-commerce brands that are seeing success with Realize include Temu, Wolf and Shepherd, and Avocado Mattress.”

Challenges for Marketers

Profitability on first purchase: Your main goal may be to make a profit on the first purchase, a difficult task in the highly competitive e-commerce space.

Aversion to initial losses: Some marketers may be extremely risk-averse and will pause a campaign immediately if it’s not profitable on day one. This directly conflicts with the necessary “learning phase” of most ad platforms.

Recommendations

“Make sure you have eye-catching creatives to drive engagement”, suggests Dunkin. Great calls to action (CTAs) are essential, too. “Customers actually want you to tell them what to do. Make sure your call to action does just that,” he says.

Set a clear test budget: Rather than a fixed monthly spend, establish a sufficient daily budget for a minimum two-week test. This allows the algorithm to learn without prematurely stopping the campaign.

Leverage AI-powered bidding strategies: Utilize Max Conversions to drive as many conversions as possible initially, and then Max Value to optimize for the highest-value purchases.

Pass back dynamic return on ad spend (ROAS): Implement an S2S integration to pass back the exact revenue from each conversion. This provides the algorithm with the data it needs to identify and target users who make larger purchases, leading to a better overall ROAS.

Expected Outcomes

Profitable scaling: The algorithm will use the dynamic ROAS data to automatically identify profitable segments, allowing the client to confidently scale their ad spend.

Improved conversion rates: By using engaging creatives and optimized landing pages, the campaign will achieve a higher conversion rate, directly impacting profitability.

Long-term partnership: By demonstrating that the platform can deliver on this strict profitability metric, it’s easier to build a foundation for a long-term, high-spending partnership.

Tips for Education Marketing Success

Performance marketers in the education sector can use Realize to attract new students and drive awareness of their college or university, says Dunkin. “There has been talk of drops in enrollment across the board, but a subset of colleges like SNHU and Strayer are thriving,” he adds. “That’s due to their use of platforms like Realize partnered successfully with other marketing channels.”

Challenges for Marketers

Low budgets, high goals: Budgets for educational campaigns are often unrealistically low, while they are expected to produce a large volume of conversions.

Lack of marketing sophistication: In the education sector, clients may not understand marketing concepts like CPA, making it difficult to have a productive conversation about a campaign’s return on investment (ROI).

Recommendations

Start with a managed test: Instead of an unmonitored self-service campaign, try a managed service test with a sufficient daily budget. This provides the necessary support and data for a successful launch.

Focus on max conversions: Use a “Max Conversions” bidding strategy to prioritize lead volume over efficiency. This will generate a high number of leads, providing tangible results on a small budget.

Utilize layered and predictive targeting: Use a combination of layered targeting (geography, interests, and contextual) to create a highly relevant audience. Try the Predictive Audiences tool, which uses AI to find users who behave similarly to your existing leads, helping the campaign scale beyond initial targeting parameters.

Expected Outcomes

Tangible results: The campaign will deliver a high number of leads, providing the client with immediate, quantifiable results.

Educational foundation: The data from the successful test will serve as the basis for a more direct, educational conversation with the client about what it truly takes to achieve their long-term enrollment goals.

Justified investment: The success of the initial campaign will build a strong case for future, larger investments in the channel.

Key Takeaways

Performance marketers face plenty of challenges, but there are plenty of opportunities, too. AI-powered platforms like Realize offer audience segmentation capabilities that, done well, can help target the right high-intent users to build new audiences and drive conversions within budget constraints.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How do I use segmentation to create personalized customer experiences?

Audience segmentation offers a lot of possibilities for creating personalized customer experiences. Start by gathering all available customer data, then divide customers up by shared characteristics such as demographics or behavior, depending on your marketing goals. Then, create personalized offers, messages, landing pages, and more for each segment, taking the channel and timing into consideration as well. The results can inform your personalization strategy going forward. Realize can help you create high-powered segments using the AI-powered Predictive Audience feature with strategic manual targeting, streamlining the manual work involved.

What role do AI and machine learning (ML) play in audience segmentation?

AI and ML bring powerful capabilities to marketers working on audience segmentation. With its ability to analyze massive amounts of data, AI-powered technology, like Realize’s Predictive Audiences feature, can draw upon much more information to create more precise and predictive customer segments than typical demographic divisions. Marketers can save a lot of time with these features, which help hyper-personalize marketing campaigns by identifying patterns, predicting future behavior, and refining audience segments in real time, using the latest results. Realize uses performance AI to match content with relevant users, aligning ads with audiences by analyzing content and metadata across publisher sites.

What data do I need to collect for effective segmentation?

Consider any data that’s particularly relevant to your industry, and what you already know about your target audience. The data needed for effective segmentation will vary by campaign and industry, but typically, the basics include demographics, geographic location, behavior (such as purchase history or web activity), and any lifestyle or values data from surveys. Realize offers Search Keyword Targeting so you can create audience segments based on user keyword or phrase searches, along with custom mail domain segmenting. Realize provides more than 500 dedicated first-party segments across more than 200 categories, as well as third-party data, with audience segments for 20+ providers available. You can also use interest signals across selected segments to make your ads more relevant.