05/27/2026
The Targeting Mistake Almost Every Agency Makes
We've talked to a lot of marketing teams about how they build audiences. And there's one pattern that comes up constantly, especially on the agency side.
Campaigns are built around who the client thinks their customer is, not who is actually in-market right now.
It makes sense how it happens. A client brief comes in with a persona. Demographics, interests, income range, lifestyle attributes. The team builds targeting to match. The campaign launches. Results are reported against benchmarks.
Nobody stops to ask: are the people we're reaching actually searching for this product right now?
The persona isn't wrong, exactly. But a persona describes who your customer could be. Intent data tells you who your customer is being, right now, today, this week, as they actively research and evaluate options in your category.
Those two things can look very similar on paper and produce very different campaign results.
The agencies that have figured this out are layering intent signals on top of persona-based targeting, not replacing one with the other. They're using behavioral, in-market data to find the people who match the profile and are actively ready to engage.
The result is smaller, sharper audiences that outperform broader demographic pools, which means better results for clients, stronger retention, and a genuine competitive edge that's hard to replicate without the right data infrastructure underneath it.
Audience strategy is where agency differentiation is won or lost right now. The ones investing in identity-linked intent data are pulling ahead.
Is your agency building audiences from personas, signals, or both?
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