Your ads might not be hitting real people. That’s a problem.

Marketers have a problem.

They’re not sure they’re talking to real people.

This is an issue, as you can imagine. The inability to accurately track who your message is hitting across a litany of devices — the inability to know if your ads are even hitting real people (and not bots) — creates a host of problems, not the least of which is wasted money. Only one-quarter of all digital ad spend ever reaches actual people, according to the Association of National Advertisers.

This is a budget-killer of a buzzkill.

What’s more, people have more media choices than ever. They look up sports scores on their smartphone. Watch Hulu on Connected TV. Scroll through Facebook on their laptops. Sneak in a quick peek (or several) at Buzzfeed while they’re at work on a company computer. Never before have their options (and, by extension, their tastes) been so disparate.

And that’s just in the digital sphere. We haven’t even gotten to real life and linking someone’s online persona with their real-world self. How do you know if they’ve seen your ads, and then come to your car dealership? Or your pop-up market? Or museum?

But where there are big challenges, there are big opportunities.

In this video, we talk about real people-based marketing. The term sometimes gets thrown around in the marketing sphere; here, we walk you through what it actually takes to be people-based.