In an advertising landscape shaped by increasing privacy regulation and rapidly changing consumer behavior, traditional identity-based targeting is no longer fit for purpose. Advertisers must rethink how they define and reach audiences, shifting their focus from static, restricting identities to dynamic, real-time intent.
You may have spotted our tutu guy recently, as he has been appearing across screens in New York and London. But what’s the story behind these images? Shown in some pictures as a professional businessman, he is also evidently a ballet-loving scuba-diver.
On paper, he defies any neat demographic label, yet his interests and intent are crystal clear in the moment. As such, he comes with a powerful message for advertisers. While brands often assume they know what their target audience looks like, it is real-time intent signals that reveal how nuanced their interests can actually be.
The broader industry context here is that while first-party data has been the cornerstone of targeted advertising strategies for years, as privacy regulations tighten and consumer behaviors shift, the limitations of relying solely on this data become increasingly apparent.
Identity-based targeting leads to a constrained view of your audience landscape – in part because it depends on data that is difficult to scale and doesn’t reflect real-time intent, and therefore quickly loses relevance. The problem is, advertisers often find themselves locked into a cycle that excludes valuable segments of internet users who do not fit neatly into predefined identity boxes. It’s these missed opportunities that are highlighted in our recent campaign.
This challenge also presents an opportunity. The open web is brimming with diverse audiences, eager for engagement. So if conventional targeting strategies fail to capture the rich, often complex, signals these audiences present, how do advertisers turn to intent signals instead to take advantage of new opportunities to reach them?
It’s crucial to recognize that intent is the strongest signal to measure when it comes to connecting effectively with today’s consumers, with 97% of marketers agreeing that intent data brings a competitive advantage.
What's more, it goes far beyond just a user’s purchase intent. As advertisers, we need to be present much earlier in the consumer journey, and to acknowledge that intent changes based on a variety of factors.
Consider, for example, a winter holiday brand that believes its target market is likely people over the age of 35, and targets that demographic specifically from the outset. This approach, based on assumptions and bias, might fail to capture an emerging market of Gen Zs looking to get into skiing in the spring. That group could have delivered far higher brand awareness or conversion performance – yet the audience was missed completely.
While ID-based targeting tends to rely on keywords and one-dimensional, static profiles, in reality, people’s interests are fluid and context-dependent. Today’s consumers express intent across multiple touchpoints, and often outside of stereotypical demographic boxes. So, if you’re still using IDs, you’re missing valuable audiences.
So how does this understanding of consumer intent translate into strategic direction and, ultimately, enhanced campaign results? The answer is by embracing an approach that taps into a broader spectrum of audience signals from across the open web, drawing on advanced AI in part to interpret user behavior at scale.
At Nano Interactive, for example, we analyze billions of live ID-free signals to predict those key moments of intent, and our Intent Graph organizes them into a database that uses natural language gen AI to map the relationship between those intent signals and connect them to the objectives of a brand’s campaign. This modeling and mapping of insights against brand goals – using AI with intent – means that advertisers can target audiences with precision and understanding, ensuring that campaigns resonate in ways that cookie- or identity-dependent solutions simply cannot achieve.
By understanding the fluidity of intent, brands move beyond simple data collection towards a more complete picture of their audiences across different moments, enabling more effective engagement and more relevant, personalized experiences. Imagine reaching audiences that are hungry for your product but have never been categorized in a traditional marketing database.
As Forbes pointed out when looking at the role of demographics in marketing: ”around the world, people tend to agree only 8% of the time. Within demographic groups, agreement increases by a mere 2.5%.” Why is this the case? Because: “people base their decisions on something other than what they are.”
The takeaway here is that surface-level identity is a poor proxy for what people are actually trying to do, and severely limits advertising potential. Using intent signals offers a vast opportunity for brands instead. To find new audiences at scale, it’s time to lean into intent and move beyond IDs – because, just like the man in the tutu, people are defined far more by what they care about and what they’re doing right now than by how they look or which box they’re placed in.
