Third-Party Targeting: Off-The-Shelf Third-Party Audiences

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  • Updated on Jun 11, 2025
  • Published on Apr 1, 2024
  • 2 minute(s) read
  • MD
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Quantcast uses LiveRamp’s Data Marketplace to ingest off-the-shelf third-party audiences for clients geo-targeting the United States.

An off-the-shelf third-party (3P) audience segment is a pre-packaged group of consumers categorized by specific behaviors, demographics, interests, or intent signals, created and sold by a third-party data provider (like Experian, Dun & Bradstreet, or Bombora) for advertising and targeting purposes.

Quantcast has pulled in a subset of these audiences so that they are readily available for targeting in the Platform.

Third-party segments are best used as a complement to Quantcast audiences, and should be viewed as a backup option when Quantcast audience targeting options do not fully align with your campaign needs.

Browsing Off-The-Shelf Third-Party Audiences

If you would like to browse available off-the-shelf third-party audiences, users have a couple of options:

  1. Reference and browse the Available Segments in our Help Center.

    • Take it a step further! Utilize the Help Center bot, "Ask Q", to help you get started with browsing audiences (see screenshot below).

  2. Browse available segments in a mock ad set

    1. Create a mock ad set within your account.

    2. Click on the Lookalike and/or Retargeting field within the Audiences section.

    3. Click on Third Party Segment within the drop-down.

    4. Type in keywords related to the audience you wish to activate against.

    5. Hover over the audiences that appear to see a snapshot of the Segment ID, audience description, and audience cost.

    Did you know?

    You can “AND” or “OR” off-the-shelf segments together by toggling between “ALL” and “ANY” next to the audience segment field.

How to Determine the Size of An Off-The-Shelf Third-Party Audience

At this time, off-the-shelf third-party audience sizes can be estimated at the ad set level within a mock ad set.

  1. Create a mock ad set within your account.

  2. Navigate to the ad set setup level:

    1. Plug in a placeholder date range and budget.

    2. Scroll down to the Audience section.

    3. Remove all selections in the Lookalike field. This filed should be left empty.

    4. Clear all entries in the Retargeting field.

    5. Search for and select the desired off-the-shelf third-party audience within the Retargeting field. This should be the only segment listed here.

    6. Navigate to the Projections tool on the right-side of the screen and expand the audience details by clicking on the arrow (carrot icon).

    7. The Targetable Audience size listed reflects the size of your selected audience.

      1. Heads Up! If the targetable audience size displays as 100, it usually means the segment no longer contains any active data. In some cases, data providers may retire audiences before Quantcast is able to remove them from the UI. If you encounter this issue, please contact your Quantcast Account team for support.

Activating Your Off-The-Shelf Third-Party Audience

  1. Navigate to the Ad Set setup within your campaign.

  2. Scroll down to the Audience section within the Ad Set setup.

  3. Based on your targeting strategy, search for and select your ingested custom third-party audience in the appropriate field(s): Lookalike, Retargeting, and/or Exclusions.

  4. After selecting the desired audience, the passthrough CPM cost of the desired audience will appear in the Inventory Cost section on the right-hand panel.  

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