When does it make sense to target advanced audiences versus broad age/gender demos? And how can a brand find and reach underrepresented audiences to drive business outcomes? These are questions marketers have been grappling with since the inception of advanced advertising. Our Audience Summit @ CES panel featured TelevisaUnivision President of Advertising Sales and Marketing Donna Speciale and President of GroupM Multicultural Gonzalo Del Fa, moderated by OpenAP’s Brittany Slattery.

“It’s always been about the general market versus ‘the rest’...we need to shift the conversation to inclusive marketing,” stated Del Fa. 

For too long, there have been challenges that have prevented a mass shift away from broad demos and towards holistic, advanced audiences, lack of reliable data and increasing privacy restrictions on audience targeting chief among them. But these challenges are easily surmountable with a perspective shift from separate audiences to a holistic strategy. “If you look at the facts of what the population now looks like…it’s a holistic population and we cannot segment it [by ethnicity], it needs to look like a holistic country,” said Speciale. 

Effective marketing strategies go beyond more advanced and holistic audience targeting, it requires alignment from every team on the campaign, including creative. Put simply, if the creative is not tailored to the audience viewing it, it won’t resonate with the audience.

Marketers would be better served by adopting an advanced strategy built on behavioral parameters than broaddemos, anyways. For GroupM advertisers leaning into an inclusive marketing strategy, “we are looking at understanding what are the motivations, what are the values, where are the places I find people that represent an opportunity for my brand,” said Del Fa, not just at an audience’s demographics. The result? An engaged audience that is more closely aligned with campaign and brand KPIs, anyways.