Audiences

Audience data tells Rokt who your campaigns should target. Before a campaign can start, you provide a suppression, seed and retargeting audience that Rokt uses to understand your ideal customer and find more people like them across the Rokt Network. A seed, suppression and retargeting audience is required for all new Rokt Ads campaigns.

Seed audiences and lookalikes

A seed audience is a list of your best or highest-intent customers, for example high-value or frequent buyers, or customers who have shown strong purchase intent. Rokt uses this seed to build a Lookalike Audience: it finds new customers across the network who share similar characteristics and are therefore more likely to convert. Lookalikes are the primary way to target high-performing, net-new audiences on Rokt.

The higher the quality of your seed, the better Rokt can model and find your next customers:

• Seed with your most valuable customers, such as high lifetime value, high average order value, or frequent buyers. You can also seed with high-intent behaviors, such as recent site visitors or abandoned carts.
• Provide a persistent identifier, such as email (raw or SHA-256 hashed), so Rokt can match your customers accurately.
• A larger, high-quality seed generally produces stronger lookalikes. See the integration guides below for recommended list sizes. Recommended sizing is around ~30k users.

Suppression audiences

You can also provide suppression audiences to exclude customers who should not see a campaign. Suppression is especially important for acquisition campaigns, where you do not want to spend to reacquire customers you already have. For revenue campaigns optimizing toward return on ad spend, existing customers are often efficient converters, so you may choose not to suppress them.

Retargeting audiences

Retargeting audiences allow Rokt to target those users who have abandoned your site prior to the action Rokt is trying to optimize against. The easiest way to integrate a retargeting audience is via the Rokt SDK+. If you are integrating via another method, please consult with your Rokt solutions team to learn how to integrate retargeting audience data.

How to provide audience data

Provide audience data through the method that fits your stack. The same custom audiences can be used to build lookalikes, target existing customers, or suppress them. The methods below are listed in order of preference, starting with the one Rokt recommends most.

Audience API

Forward your audience segments to Rokt programmatically and keep them in sync.

SFTP

Send audience segments to Rokt securely in batch as CSV files, kept in sync for targeting and suppression.

Customer data platforms

Sync audiences from platforms such as mParticle, Segment, LiveRamp, and others.

Import custom audiences

Upload a customer list directly, then segment and combine lists to fit your targeting.

Get started

Provide audiences through the method that suits you, and add suppression audiences where relevant. Setting up audience data is one of the two integrations required before your campaigns can launch; the other is conversion tracking. For help getting started, reach out to support@rokt.com.