Understanding Personas
Quantcast uses AI and our deep understanding of your target audience to explain who is engaging with your website and ad sets. This explanation is provided through Personas.
A Persona helps you understand the type of people you're targeting, as well as people who are engaging with your ad. By connecting ad set targeting directly to performance, Personas identifies high-performing audiences so you can use that information to inform future marketing strategies.
This article explains how Personas are used in two key areas: during conversion ad set creation and for post-launch performance insights in Analysis by Q.
Personas During Ad Set Creation (Conversion Campaigns)
Personas are introduced early in the conversion ad set setup process to help you understand the audience Quantcast will be targeting before you launch.
How it Works:
Site Traffic Baseline: When creating a conversion-focused ad set, Quantcast first examines the audience information based on your conversion event.
Persona Creation: We then layer your pixel traffic data with our extensive Audience Graph to create detailed Personas.
Expected Alignment: These initial Personas should generally align with what you expect to see in your site traffic reports, providing a clear picture of the people currently visiting your site.
This process gives Audience by Q the necessary context to confidently drive conversions from the start, targeting the audience segments most relevant to your business.
Personas in Analysis by Q (Across All Ad Set Types)
Once your ad set is live, Analysis by Q provides a powerful way to understand which people are engaging with your ads.
Engagement-Based Insights
Analysis by Q Personas are based on ad set delivery and engagement (such as clicks, impressions, conversions), not site traffic. Early in the ad set's life, the Persona will consider more delivery information, but as engagement occurs, Analysis by Q will present personas that could be unexpected, new, and/or noteworthy.
This is a key distinction: Analysis by Q Personas are based on ad set delivery and engagement (such as clicks, impressions, or conversions), while Audience Overview Personas use site traffic.
Reporting on Performance
Analysis by Q provides a dual view of performance:
Top Personas: The Personas that are most relevant to your conversion event and site traffic.
High-value Personas: The Personas that are specifically driving your Key Performance Indicator (KPI) — whether that's conversions, clicks, or reach.
You will often see significant overlap between the site-relevant personas and the high performing personas.
Crucially, the Audience Graph may also find new, unexpected Personas. For example, a Persona that is performing exceptionally well in driving conversions may not be a known portion of your overall site traffic. These Personas reveal new, untapped audience opportunities.
Taking Action
The seamless, end-to-end experience allows you to use these insights to:
Deep-Dive Learnings: Analyze the granular details of these high-performing audiences.
Get the most out of your conversion audiences: Quantcast’s Audience Graph works best when there are no constraints put on ad sets. To continue to get the best results and find your high-performing Personas, best practice is to enable Audience by Q on conversion ad sets.
Do: Use this information to inform and launch new marketing strategies.
Do Not: It is not a good idea to adjust your targeting to narrow focus on a persona, doing so would actually have the opposite impact by over constraining your ad set. Quantcast’s Audience Graph works best when it has control to find Personas naturally.
By showing you who is truly engaging and performing, the use of Personas across Audience by Q and Analysis by Q ensures Quantcast can continuously optimize your ad sets to reach the right people based on real site and campaign data.