You want to build a global audience.

You want to make sure it’s full of real, verified people.

You want to perform U.S.-style ad targeting in countries outside the U.S.

All valid objectives. But up until recently, you may have faced obstacles.

Perhaps your global data was sparse or didn’t come from reliable sources. Perhaps you didn’t have global data at all. Maybe you weren’t able to correctly identify your global audiences across the litany of devices they used. Or maybe you were doing fine in Western Europe, but couldn’t crack into Latin America.

In a webinar we hosted with Adobe, we tackled these issues and broke down how to do U.S.-style ad targeting for global audiences. Rich Phillips, Adobe’s Senior Manager, Business Development, and our own SVP of Data and Strategic Partnerships, Ari Saposh, outlined how.

The main takeaways: being able to understand mobile behavioral attributes is something that global audiences are just starting to understand. Finding a data partner who already understands this — and is GDPR-compliant — is hugely important.

Here were the other key points. (And if you’d like to talk to us directly about our global data, you can reach out here.)

You need to cut through the noise.

We live in a world of ad blindness, where people are inundated with marketing messages of all kinds across a litany of screens. You need to cut through the noise.

This starts with relevancy. In every campaign, every person you want to reach should be qualified and known, so you can deliver highly relevant ad targeting to them, no matter what screen they’re on. Activate your messaging wherever your customers are: Facebook, mobile, desktop, connected TV—wherever.

In order to do this, you need first-party data.

Then, you need to fill in the gaps with additional data.

Find a data partner that owns all of its own data and has a ton of global audiences. These audiences should include people interested in verticals like travel, sports, entertainment, retail, and banking.

Scale matters, and not just in Western Europe.

You need to move the needle with the audience you’re going after, especially if you’re a big company. So hit the right people, in large quantities.

Hit them in Western Europe, sure. But also hit Asia, Latin America, and South America — places with rich audiences waiting to see the type of evolved ad products we see in the U.S.

Saposh cited Latin America and the Asia-Pacific as regions where we’re seeing a lot of interest and traction.

How you collect your data is of massive import.

Make sure your partner has opt-in, first-party data. They should then be able to link unique mobile device IDs to real, verified individuals and build custom audiences. Without this, you won’t hit your KPIs.

The smartphone is usually a person’s most personal, relevant device. You can gather insights about app usage, real-time location, mobile browsing behaviors, purchase history, and more. Mobile devices are even more important globally: people don’t own desktops like they do in the U.S., so the majority of their activity takes place on mobile.

Also: your data partner’s SDK should be country-agnostic. That will provide reliable international data at scale.

Whether you operate a payment system app or a huge audio streaming service, leveraging global data works.

The biggest payment system company in Latin America was looking for a custom global audience. They turned to their DMP, one of our exchange partners, hoping to create a conquest campaign. Utilizing first-party mobile behavioral data, we were able to build two custom target audiences composed of Brazilian users. Our two audiences included direct users of the payment system app and direct users of competing payment system apps.

Our global data scale resulted in the client renewing a multi-month conquest campaign with our custom target audiences. We increased brand awareness and were recognized as the best data partner to identify users who had competing payment system apps in Brazil.

Let’s look at another use case. An audio streaming platform wanted to fill in the gaps in their data with good-quality, at-scale international data. They reached out to us to acquire specific segments by country. Using actual, verified and GDPR-compliant customer profiles, we were able to amplify their global audience, identifying MAIDs requested from specific countries like Germany, England, France, Spain, and Italy.

The audio streaming company was able to layer the country-specific segments with the international segments to create custom segments by country. Instead of using their own data, as they typically did, they partnered with Bridge to increase their international audience scale. Our GDPR-compliant third-party data filled in the gaps around their global customers.

Like everything data-related, transparency and trust are key.

Whatever global data partner you choose, make sure that their data collection practices are honest and transparent. Their data should be ethically-sourced and GDPR-compliant. Unlike walled gardens, the partner should share consumer data insights with their customers to help them make sound decisions.

That’s why groups like the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) are so important. They hold the ad industry accountable and are committed to an environment where every consumer has control over the collection and use of their data in a clean, transparent way.

With the right global data partner, you can cut through the noise and do U.S.-style targeting outside the U.S. This is huge, and will give you an understanding of the global audience that will put you ten steps ahead of the competition.

Bridge is a proud global data provider for Adobe Audience Manager and is a trusted third-party data partner providing strategy, insight, and targetable audiences for global brands. We’ve built a verified global audience of more than 125MM people all tied to billions of data points that help advertisers and brands understand an individual’s unique interests and behaviors. If you’d like to leverage our data, get in touch.

We utilize our Mobile Publisher Network, consisting of thousands of apps on over 400 million devices, to source our first-party mobile data. Transparency and consent are priorities for us. All of our data is permission-based, ethically-sourced and fully compliant.