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How Targeted Are Digital Ads?
When it comes to digital ads, we like to think all that online stalking about your "interests" is finely tuned and data-backed. In reality? Brands are still wasting mountains of cash guessing who you are - often getting it wildly wrong.
A new study from global media tech company Adlook highlights just how broken demographic targeting still is. One jaw-dropping stat says it all: nearly 70% of users targeted as "Parents" by advertisers…don’t have any kids.
It's more than just embarrassing. It's a serious issue of misdirected budgets, weak campaigns, and clueless media-buying that hasn’t caught up to today's digital reality.
How Bad Is It? (Spoiler: Worse Than You Think)
Adlook’s research combined polling over 1,300 U.S. adults with an analysis of online ad data. The results weren't pretty.
Precision targeting? Not even close. Among audiences brands thought were "Women aged 18–24," nearly half were actually men. Over 60% were way older than 24 - some were even over 55. And that whole “Moms” targeting block you see brands throw millions at? More than half were actually men, and about 62% didn’t have children at all.
It didn’t stop there:
- About 40% targeted as "homeowners" were actually renters.
- Half the so-called "Women" reached turned out to be men.
- Around 76% of users hit with “Married” messaging weren’t even married.
The study also showed enormous overlap in so-called mutually exclusive groups - meaning the same user could be incorrectly bucketed into categories like “Age under 34” and “Age over 55” at the same time.
If you’re spending serious money reaching one clean audience, your ads could be missing the mark at rates that are just not acceptable at this point.
The Root of the Problem
So how did things get this bad?
Blame the lingering love affair with “old-school” audience carving. Many media strategies still build ad targeting around broad social categories - women 20–44, parents, homeowners, etc. This kind of thinking comes from old offline practices where guessing big, general traits was all you could really do.
The problem is, today’s tech can go so much deeper, layering in behaviors, real-time interests, and other contextual signals - but many advertisers aren't using it. Instead, they're throwing budget after lazy guesswork.
And all this gets even scarier when you think about privacy. If companies are building inaccurate consumer profiles now, as the digital landscape moves away from tracking cookies and deep personal profiling, who's going to be left wasting more ad money?
(Answer: brands that don’t fix this soon.)
A Call for Smarter, More Respectful Marketing
Mateusz Jedrocha, Adlook’s chief product officer, puts it bluntly: outdated assumptions lead to “wasted spend and reduced campaign effectiveness.”
It's not just inefficient - it’s insulting to customers. Grouping millions into tired, wrong categories says, “we don’t actually care who you are.”
Today's successful brands must rethink audience targeting from the ground up. It's time to ditch blanket stereotypes and tap into smarter, privacy-respecting tools that understand actual behavior, real-time interests, and human nuance.
In 2025 and beyond, guessing isn’t just lazy - it’s a liability