As you put together your media buying plans, you actively consider your audience, the timing of your campaigns, and the content that will work the best. This week we have insights on why you should use personalization, network data, and custom audiences to power your advertising, with examples for Twitter and Instagram.

The connected shopper has high expectations for the digital communications they receive from your brand. They expect you to know them as real people, and want to see messages that relate to their experiences. Personalization is key to driving the business results you desire, and according to eMarketer the top two benefits of using personalized content and interaction are driving higher response and engagement rates and producing timely and relevant interactions, which also contributes to the first benefit. The next two are increasing customer affinity and word-of-mouth and converting customers to take action.

Activate your first party data using Custom Audiences and website retargeting for Facebook and Tailored Audiences and keyword targeting on Twitter to achieve the highest level of personalization. For example, if a visitor checked out hiking boots on your online retail store, it is a good idea to advertise to them about hiking. If a customer complains on Twitter, now is not the right time to send them an ad.

Every advertising platform is unique in both the features they offer to advertisers and the demographics of its users. You know your target audience better than anyone, so how does that compare to the platform on which you advertise? Adweek shared an infographic from SproutSocial that shows the demographic breakdown of major platforms so you can learn more about how to reach your target audience. Of all adult internet users that make more than $75,000 per year, 27% are using Twitter. Twitter allows you to target your followers and users similar to your followers.

Instagram is the hot new platform for advertising and its users present a huge opportunity for advertisers. According to Instagram, 60% of its users 18-24 in the US visit the platform an average of 10 times per day and 30% of its users 25-34 in the US visit Instagram an average of 5 times per day. Salesforce corporate marketing is using Custom Audiences through Facebook to advertise to Instagram users who have attended Dreamforce in previous years; we are one of the first B2B companies to use Instagram ads.

To learn how Atomic 212 integrated real revenue data and advertising data to achieve 11x ROI for an online retailer, download our agency case study!