Smarter Audiences: Closing the Gap Between Definitions & Real Behaviour
by on 21st Aug 2025 in News
In this article, Hilary Goldsmith, chief customer officer at Nexxen, outlines the evolution of targeting models and how this is culminating in greater adaptability and performance.
Audience planning has long relied on segmentation. It’s how we bring structure to the chaos - turning abstract brand personas into something targetable and measurable. But the way we define audiences hasn’t kept pace with the way people actually behave.
Today’s media environment is fragmented, fast-moving, and deeply personal. People don’t consume content in neat, linear ways. They’re scrolling, streaming, skipping, switching. And yet, much of our audience strategy is still based on static, retrospective data: a collection of pre-built segments, often designed for another time, place, or platform.
That’s not to say these foundational data sets don’t have value. They do. But when we rely on them alone, we risk missing the nuance - the small but powerful behaviours that drive real outcomes. To close that gap, we need to evolve our approach. We need to build smarter audiences.
Smarter audiences don’t abandon traditional targeting models; they enhance them. They layer in behavioural signals that reflect how people are actually moving through media: what they’re watching, where they’re watching it, how they engage, and how they respond.
Automatic content recognition (ACR) data is one example. By capturing viewership trends across linear and streaming environments, ACR data provides a live signal into what people are watching - not just what we assume they’re interested in. That means advertisers can go beyond assumed affinities and
instead build plans rooted in real-time engagement. For instance, if someone just watched the Six Nations on a smart TV, or has been repeatedly exposed to a competitor’s linear ad, that’s a powerful moment to meet them with the right message (or to actively exclude them and redirect spend elsewhere).
Attention data also plays a role here, serving as a bridge between audience definition and actual interaction. It offers a valuable proxy for relevance: how long did someone spend with a piece of content, or how intently did they engage? Though attention alone doesn’t tell the full story. It’s the combination of attention with deeper behavioural inputs - including creative receptivity, contextual affinities and repeat exposure - that unlocks the full potential of a smarter audience.
The value of this layered approach goes beyond planning. It creates a more responsive feedback loop between insight and activation. Smarter audiences evolve with performance. As campaigns run, data can feed back into the system - informing which audience traits correlate with conversion, which channels are underperforming, and where to re-allocate budget mid-flight. In short, smarter audiences give us a way to optimise not just who we reach, but how and when we reach them.
That responsiveness matters more than ever. With growing pressure on performance, limited signal availability, and higher expectations from clients, advertisers can’t afford to treat audience planning as a static checklist. The most effective strategies today are those that stay in motion - adapting based on live inputs and constantly seeking alignment between consumer behaviour and campaign goals.
Smarter audiences are a way to get there. They’re not a product or a pitch; they’re a mindset. One that prioritises relevance, adaptability, and above all, outcomes.
It’s time we stopped asking just "who is this person?" and started asking "what are they doing - right now - that matters to this brand?" Because when we close the gap between audience definitions and real-world behaviour, we don’t just target better. We perform better.
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