How Agencies Use Audience Segmentation to Increase ROAS

In today’s fast-paced digital media landscape, agencies representing multichannel consumer brands are facing new and complex challenges. As media budgets tighten, privacy controls increase, and third-party data sources decline, the ability to create and activate high-performing audience segments has become critical. Many digital and media agencies are now asking: How can we more effectively target shoppers to drive results throughout the funnel? 

The answer lies in smarter audience segmentation strategies, powered by real-time and actionable shopper data. MikMak helps agencies effectively address this challenge. It provides eCommerce tools and insights for agencies that go beyond traditional awareness metrics, to create qualified shopper audiences.

The Pain Points: What’s Holding Agencies Back From Driving Profitability

To increase ROAS and drive profitability for brand clients, agencies must overcome five key audience-building challenges:

1. Incomplete First-Party Data
   Many brands have important CRM or site data. However, this data is often not cleaned, segmented, or connected across platforms. This can lead to missed chances for revenue.
2. Limited Conversion-Level Insights
   Agencies often lack access to bottom-funnel signals like Purchase Intent or Add-to-Cart behavior. This limits their ability to optimize their media strategy beyond awareness and effectively drive sales.
3. Redundant Audiences Across Campaigns
   Without deduplication or audience overlap tools, agencies risk overspending on the same users, hurting media efficiency and ROAS.
4. Shrinking Addressable Audiences
   As third-party cookies decline and privacy rules grow, it is harder to reach high-quality audiences at scale.
5. Lack of Real-Time Audience Activation
   Building and syncing audiences across platforms takes time, delaying optimizations that could directly improve performance and profitability. 

Why Digital Advertising Profitability Matters More Than Ever

With economic pressures and tariffs squeezing margins, many brands are tempted to cut media spend. A recent IAB survey shows that 60 percent of US advertisers expect their budgets to drop by 6 to 10 percent. 

However, sacrificing brand awareness is risky. Global brands, like Coca-Cola and Unilever, choose not to cut ad spending during tough times. They know it is important to keep their brand visible when the economy is struggling.

To help brands retain market share and protect profitability, agencies must help them make smarter media decisions. Targeting the right audiences is key to increasing advertising performance and profitability, helping brands do more with less.

Agencies that drive ROI with precise targeting won’t just keep business, they’ll become trusted partners to their clients.

Use Shopper Insights for Media Audience Optimization

MikMak gives brands and their agencies the ability to:

✅ Access and use brands’ owned first-party data to segment audiences according to different variables such as:

• Acquisition channel / platform
• Creative
• Product interest / SKU
• Retailer preferences
• Geographic location
• Fulfillment behavior
• Influencer association

✅  Gain real-time insights beyond awareness, into conversion metrics, including:

• Purchase Intent Clicks: The number of times a shopper clicks through to at least one retailer during a single session within MikMak Commerce-enabled content. This metric indicates engagement with high purchase intent, the shopper is taking a clear step toward buying.
• Purchase Intent Rate: The percentage of shoppers who clicked through to at least one retailer. This shows the conversion efficiency of your content in driving purchase behavior.
• Purchase Intent Value: An estimated monetary value calculated based on Purchase Intent Clicks and the listed SKU price. This helps quantify the potential revenue generated by your campaigns.
• Add-to-Cart actions at specific retailers. This is a strong downstream signal of purchase readiness and can help identify high-performing retailers and content placements.

✅ Turn on audience measurement and segmenting throughout the funnel. This includes top-funnel prospecting campaigns and bottom-funnel retargeting on all major media platforms.

✅ Optimize performance from the first impression to the final click: Check which channels, influencers, creatives, and SKUs are driving conversions. Then, move your budget to audience segments that show the best conversion potential.

Boost Your Performance with Smarter Retargeting and Lookalike Audiences

Once you segment shopper groups with MikMak data, you can retarget them. You can also create lookalike audiences for high-performing platforms.

Retargeting Campaigns:

• Re-engage shoppers who interacted with the brand.
• Retarget audience segments based on specific MikMak events like Purchase Intent Clicks or Add-to-Cart actions.
• Segment further by creative, fulfillment, geographic, or retailer preference.

Lookalike Audiences:

• Use first-party MikMak data to build high-intent prospecting audiences.
• Expand audience reach to include people with similar characteristics and shopping behavior. 
• Model and expand that seed-set to a lookalike audience and target them in future marketing.

💡Tip: Create MikMak audiences early in your campaign. This helps your campaigns evolve efficiently as you get insights.

Case Study: How MikMak Helped PHD Agency Create Stronger Audiences and Drive Improved ROAS for BIC UK

PHD partnered with MikMak to capture first-party data via MikMak pixels and landing pages. They used MikMak Insights to build lookalike audiences at no additional cost. The result: A measurable increase in both Purchase Intent Rate and ROAS for BIC UK.

Activate Media that Converts

To meet rising performance demands and tighter data regulations, agencies need smarter tools. MikMak empowers you to:

• Take control of shopper data
• Build qualified audiences
• Target and retarget audiences based on real purchase behavior

Without MikMak, optimization stops at awareness. With it, agencies gain insights into purchase intent and Add-to-Carts, fueling strategies that drive real revenue.

MikMak’s API-first technology also links media metrics to commerce results. It integrates seamlessly with BI tools like Tableau, PowerBI, and Looker Studio. This helps make decision-making more efficient.

Case Study: How Curiosity Agency Used MikMak to Drive Sales and Lower Costs for DUDE WIPES

Curiosity Agency leveraged real-time MikMak Insights to drive performance improvements for personal care brand DUDE WIPES. Using data-driven insights, the agency made strategic optimizations, such as removing audio from creative assets and reallocating spend to higher-performing channels like social and search. These adjustments, applied across both media and the brand’s website, led to a significant increase in Purchase Intent and a notable reduction in cost per Purchase Intent Click.

Are you ready to leverage shopper data to drive stronger ROAS? Learn more about MikMak’s Agency Partnerships and book a demo to see how we can help you.