The Power Of Relevance: Why The Right Audience Matters More Than Ever

By Helen Mussard, VP Marketing, AUDIENCES

As a marketer, I'm constantly thinking about how to make our campaigns more effective. Who are we trying to reach? What do we know about them? Are we investing in the right channels? And, perhaps most importantly, are we making the best possible use of the intelligence we already have?

These are questions that become particularly relevant as marketing teams begin planning their campaigns and budgets for 2027. That's why a finding from Kantar's recently published Media Reactions 2026 report caught my attention: campaigns are seven times more impactful among more receptive audiences.

It's a powerful reminder that effective advertising isn't simply about reaching more people. It's about reaching the right people, in the right environments, with something relevant to say. And it raises an important question for brands: how much of what you already know about your customers is actually informing your media strategy?

Personalisation is about more than knowing someone's name

As consumers, we all recognise advertising that gets it right. The campaigns that catch our attention aren't necessarily the ones that know the most about us, but those that feel relevant to who we are, what we're interested in or what's happening around us.

A couple of campaigns have caught my attention recently. Aveeno's weather-triggered digital out-of-home campaign, launched in September 2026, is a great example of contextual relevance. By bringing TikTok creator content onto outdoor screens and responding to real-time weather conditions, the brand demonstrated how creative and context can work together to make advertising more timely. When the sun was shining, the creative reminded consumers about sun protection. On cloudier days, it highlighted the importance of SPF even when the sun wasn't visible.

Sainsbury's Be a Smart Cookie campaign takes a different approach, highlighting how its SmartShop proposition uses previous shopping behaviour to offer customers personalised discounts.

What I like about these examples is that they demonstrate two different sides of relevance. One responds to the moment; the other draws on what a brand already knows about its customers. Neither approach replaces great creative. In fact, both depend on it.

But they reinforce something I believe marketers should be thinking more about: personalisation isn't just about identifying an audience, it's about understanding what might be useful or meaningful to them. And that's where first-party customer intelligence, combined with the right context and creative thinking, has enormous potential.

Relevance is becoming increasingly important

Kantar's research, drawing on approximately 23,000 consumers across 33 markets and 800 senior marketers globally, paints an interesting picture of today's advertising landscape. Consumers are becoming more accepting of advertising. The proportion who feel exposed to too many ads has fallen from 25% to 21%, while those who find advertising repetitive has dropped from 24% to 20%. Yet marketers are becoming less confident. Four in ten now question whether they're getting the fundamentals of their media mix right.

I can understand why. We're planning campaigns across increasingly fragmented channels, balancing brand-building with performance, and constantly looking for ways to make budgets work harder. Kantar also found, using its LIFT+ database, that 43% of campaign impact now comes from channels working together, compared with 18% before 2014. For me, this reinforces the importance of a connected media strategy, where decisions about audiences, channels and creative aren't made in isolation.

We know more about our customers than we're using

One of the things I find most interesting about working at AUDIENCES is seeing the depth of customer intelligence that organisations already have available to them. Take retailers with established loyalty programmes, travel businesses with years of booking history, or insurers with valuable insight into customer relationships and renewal cycles. These organisations already understand a great deal about their customers.The opportunity is to make more of that intelligence available to the marketing teams planning and executing campaigns. And this is especially relevant as brands review their acquisition, retention and re-engagement strategies for the year ahead.

If a customer has already purchased, should they still be seeing the same acquisition advertising? If we know which customers are approaching renewal, could that help shape a more timely campaign? And if we can identify our most valuable customer segments, how do we make those insights available across the different media environments we're investing in? Of course, first-party data alone doesn't guarantee that an audience will be receptive. Creative, context and timing all play an important role. But it can help marketers make better-informed decisions about who to reach, who to exclude and how to improve the relevance of their campaigns.

Making audience intelligence part of campaign planning

Another finding from Kantar's research stood out to me: marketers place measurement credibility and transparency above other factors when it comes to trusting advertising platforms. It's understandable. With every marketing investment under scrutiny, we need greater confidence in where our budgets are going and what they're delivering. But I think there's another important consideration: how much control do brands have over the customer intelligence being used to inform their campaigns?

At AUDIENCES, we're working with organisations to help them make more of their first-party data, connecting customer intelligence to media activation without having to move or duplicate the underlying data.

That means marketers can build audiences using the information already available within their organisations and activate them across connected media platforms, while retaining control and governance. For teams planning campaigns, it opens opportunities to improve audience relevance, make more informed decisions about media investment and reduce unnecessary advertising spend.

A question worth asking as we plan for 2027

As marketers, we're always looking ahead to the next campaign, the next opportunity and the next set of performance targets. And while new channels and technologies will continue to shape how we advertise, Kantar's research is a timely reminder that understanding our audiences remains fundamental.

For brands planning their 2027 activity, I'd encourage marketing teams to consider not just where they're investing, but how effectively they're using their own customer intelligence to inform those decisions. Because ultimately, we don't necessarily need to collect more data or reach more people, we need to make better use of what we already know, to reach the people who matter.

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