Retargeting and Look-Alike Audiences
Custom audiences allow you to reach listeners more effectively by tailoring who hears your ads based on prior interactions or shared characteristics.
📘 What Are Retargeting and Look-Alike Audiences?
Retargeting audiences consist of listeners who have already interacted with your brand — such as visiting your website, completing a tracked event, or appearing in your CRM data.
These audiences are used to re-engage people who have already shown interest, helping to move them further down the conversion funnel.
Example use cases:
- Re-messaging users who visited your site but didn’t complete a purchase.
- Promoting new products to existing customers.
Look-Alike audiences (sometimes called “similar audiences”) are groups of new listeners who share behavioral, contextual, or demographic similarities with your existing audience or customers.
They help you expand reach efficiently by targeting users who are statistically more likely to engage or convert, based on what’s known about your current data sources and listener interactions.
🔍 How Look-Alike Audiences Are Identified
When you create a look-alike audience in Audiohook, our system analyzes the characteristics and patterns of your source audience (from Pixel, CRM, or CDP data).
This audience data is stored securely and used only for modeling within the platform.
From there, we match and model similar listeners across our programmatic inventory using multiple layers of data:
- Behavioral Data: Listening patterns, interaction history, and engagement with ads.
- Demographic and Device Signals: Region, device type, and other non-personally identifiable attributes that help build a profile of likely converters.
- Contextual Data: Audiohook’s platform also tracks podcast show genres and contextual topics (for example, “fitness,” “technology,” or “business leadership”). This enables a more refined approach to audience expansion than standard demographic modeling alone.
- Publisher and Content Matching: Listeners are also compared by the types of shows and networks they engage with, allowing the look-alike model to find listeners who consume similar types of content.
Because Audiohook combines contextual podcast-level insights with behavioral and demographic signals, look-alike modeling is often more accurate than traditional display-based methods.
The result is an audience that behaves like your best-performing users — but at scale.
In an audio advertising campaign, both audience types work together to improve efficiency:
- Retargeting reconnects with users already aware of your brand.
- Look-alikes bring in new, high-potential listeners modeled after those proven to engage.
Step 1: Create a New Audience
- Navigate to Audiences in the left menu.
- Click New Audience.
- Enter a clear Audience Name.
- (Optional) Add Tags to help organize and identify your audience later.
Step 2: Select the Audience Model
Under Audience Model, choose one of the following options:
- Retargeting: Re-engage users who have already interacted with your brand.
- Look-Alike: Find new users similar to your existing audience based on shared behaviors, podcast interests, or demographic similarities.
Step 3: Choose a Data Source
Under Data Source, select one of the following:
- Pixel Events
- CRM Data
- CDP Data
Option 1: Pixel Events
To use pixel events as your data source:
- You must have the Audiohook tracking tag installed on your site.
- The tag must be verified in the Onboarding section of the UI.
- If not verified, the Create button will remain inactive.
Adding Rules for Pixel Events
- Click Add Rule.
- A new field will appear with a dropdown menu on the right.
- Choose either Event or URL from the dropdown.
If you select Event:
- Enter one of the event names tracked by your Audiohook tracking tag.
- To view available event names, go to Conversion Tag in the left menu to see which events are firing (audience will not be saved if not created yet when navigating away from this page)
If you select URL:
- Enter a site URL where the Audiohook tracking tag is implemented.
- Example: entering your homepage URL will include all site visitors in the audience.
- The URL must include the
http://orhttps://prefix.
Adding Multiple Rules
You can add more than one event or URL by clicking Add Rule again.
Each additional rule expands your audience definition.
Option 2: CRM Data
If you select CRM Data, an Upload .CSV button will appear.
Follow these steps:
- Click Upload .CSV.
- Map your data fields when prompted to ensure correct column matching.
- Review for any errors before proceeding.
- You can download the Audiohook Onboarding Template CSV from the upload window for reference.
Supported data types include:
- IP address and hashed IP (best match rates)
- Name and address data
- Email or hashed email
- Phone number
- MAID (Mobile Advertising ID)
📘 Note: Audiences must be large enough to support serving impressions for retargeting or look-alike modeling.
Option 3: CDP Data
For CDP data, follow the same upload process as CRM data.
Ensure proper field mapping and confirm there are no errors before saving.
Step 4: Save the Audience
Once your data source and rules are configured:
- Review your settings.
- Click Create to save your audience.
📘 Note:
If the Audiohook tracking tag has not been verified, the Create button will be disabled for Pixel Event audiences.
Step 5: Use the Audience in a Campaign
When building your campaign:
- Open the Custom Audience dropdown.
- Select the audience you created.
✅ Best Practices
- Use clear, descriptive audience names
- Upload clean, deduplicated CRM/CDP data for optimal match rates.
- Ensure audience sizes meet minimum thresholds for delivery.
- For best performance, build Look-Alike audiences from high-quality first-party data (such as completed purchases or high-intent site visitors).