How Qloo can (and can’t) be used for ad targeting by brands and agencies

Qloo helps brands and agencies understand what makes their audiences tick—their tastes, interests, and preferences across culture, entertainment, lifestyle, and more. Whether it’s the brands they love, the music they listen to, or the restaurants they frequent, Qloo uncovers the hidden connections that shape consumer behavior. Unlike many audience intelligence platforms, Qloo does this without relying on personally identifiable information (PII), device IDs, or individual tracking. This privacy-first approach naturally leads to an important question: Can this kind of intelligence be used for ad targeting?

It depends on what you mean by “ad targeting.” If you’re looking for activatable identity-based segments that plug into a DSP, that’s not one of our offerings. But if you want smarter psychographic insights about your audience to refine your overall targeting strategy, Qloo is a powerful tool for understanding these contextual clues.

How programmatic ad targeting works

You already know this, but just to level set—advertisers typically target audiences in two ways:

1. Identity-based targeting reaches users based on unique identifiers like email addresses, device IDs, or cookies. Advertisers can either upload first-party data (e.g., CRM lists) or use third-party audience segments (e.g., “coffee drinkers” or “luxury travelers”).
2. Contextual targeting serves ads based on webpage content rather than user identity. This can include pre-built content categories (like “Sports News”) or custom keyword-based targeting (like targeting articles that mention “NBA playoffs”).
   

Since Qloo doesn’t work with identifiers, it can’t be used directly to create targetable audiences—but it can help advertisers refine their strategy for both approaches.

How Qloo improves ad targeting

While Qloo does not provide activatable third-party audience segments, it does help brands make smarter choices about which audience segments to target and how to align their ads with relevant content.

One way Qloo supports better targeting is by inspiring audience segment selection. By surfacing tastes, interests, and affinities, Qloo helps advertisers make more informed decisions about which third-party, identity-based audience segments to use in their advertising. For example, Qloo may reveal that a hotel brand’s most enthusiastic fans are foodies, as exposed by their high affinity for brands like Le Creuset, restaurants like The French Laundry, and podcasts like The Splendid Table. Based on this insight, the hotel brand could refine its ad strategy by adding a “People interested in gourmet food” third-party audience segment to its next programmatic campaign—ensuring its ads reach the most relevant potential customers.

This same approach can apply to interest-based targeting on social platforms like Meta, where advertisers select audience interests. Qloo’s insights helps brands identify the most relevant interests to target, ensuring their social campaigns align with the real-world preferences of their audience.

Qloo also enhances contextual targeting, making it more precise and effective. Many advertisers rely on Google Ads topics, IAB’s content taxonomy, and other standardized classifications to determine where their ads appear. Qloo can map its insights to these taxonomies, helping advertisers place ads within the most relevant content environments. For example, Qloo may reveal that an audience has strong affinities for Aveeno, Neutrogena, and CeraVe—brands that all fall under the “Face & Body Care” metadata category in Google Ads. An advertiser could then use this insight to target that specific category in their contextual campaign, ensuring their ads appear within content related to skincare and personal care, where their audience is most likely to be engaged.

Finally, Qloo can enrich CDP and CRM records, providing brands with a deeper understanding of their customers before activating campaigns. By appending cultural and taste preferences to existing customer lists—when passed non-PII signals like geographic or behavioral data—Qloo enables brands to better segment their audiences. This can be particularly valuable for advertisers looking to refine their first-party data strategy, ensuring they use the most relevant segments when activating identity-based targeting within advertising platforms.

While Qloo isn’t a DSP, its cultural intelligence helps advertisers make more data-driven decisions about audience selection and ad placement. Whether by informing third-party segment selection, refining contextual targeting, or enriching first-party customer data, Qloo empowers advertisers to better align their campaigns with the real-world preferences of their audience.‍
‍

Additionally, Qloo does not replace third-party audience segment providers. Instead, it complements them by helping advertisers make more informed decisions about which audience segments to use in the first place. While advertisers still need identity-based data for programmatic targeting, Qloo adds an extra layer of intelligence that helps ensure those selections are aligned with real-world audience preferences.

‍What Qloo does not do

Although Qloo offers rich audience insights, it does not provide activatable, pre-built, third-party audience segments that advertisers can directly export into a DSP for identity-based targeting. Unlike traditional third-party data providers, Qloo does not collect or store personally identifiable information (PII), device IDs, or tracking data—which means advertisers cannot use Qloo data to identify or directly target specific users.

‍Qloo isn’t a third-party audience provider, but it inspires smarter ad targeting‍

By integrating Qloo’s cultural insights into ad targeting planning, brands can refine their audience selection, improve contextual targeting, and create smarter, more effective campaigns that reach audiences most likely to take action.

Want to see how Qloo can enhance your ad strategy? Let’s test it out.

‍