How to Choose a Location-Based Audience: Recency & Refresh Rates

When evaluating location data and audiences, it’s important to understand both the recency of the data and the refresh rate of the audience. Recency is a measure of the overall age of the data included in the audience. Refresh rates are the rate at which mobile device IDs included in the audience are retired once the qualifying behavior is no longer observed.

Audience Recency & Refresh Rates

Let’s start with recency because, ideally, the audience data should be as fresh as possible. Fresh data helps to ensure that consumers included in the audience you’ve purchased remain relevant to your campaign. As such, you’ll always want to choose the audience with a recent, last-updated date over one that was assembled six months ago.

Choosing the best refresh rate is a bit more complex. A refresh rate may be 60, 90, 180 days or something else entirely. An audience with a 180-day refresh rate will almost certainly be larger than one with a 30-day refresh rate. But how do you know which refresh rate is most appropriate for your campaign?

Let’s imagine that you’re marketing a new coffee drink. An audience of Coffee Lovers, using a 180-day refresh rate, will probably work very well for your advertising campaign. You’ll have a sizeable audience to work with, and since many consumers in this category drink coffee daily, it’s unlikely that their consumer preferences will have changed over that 180-day period.

However, if you’re announcing the availability of the latest model car, a 180-day refresh rate will likely be problematic. After 6 months, many in-market auto intenders included in the audience will have purchased their vehicle. It’s also unlikely they’re in market for a second new car. As a result, you’d waste your advertising dollars reaching a subset of consumers who likely won’t be in-market again for years. In this example, a 60-day refresh rate will be the better fit for your campaign.

Be sure to understand how the audience is composed in terms of recency and refresh rates, so that you reach as many engaged consumers as possible. Always choose an audience that was updated recently. And, while no refresh rate is right or wrong, the optimal refresh rate for you will make logical sense in the context of your campaign.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:

• How recently was the audience updated?

• What is the refresh rate of the audience?

• Under what circumstances are mobile device IDs removed from the audience?

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