How Intent Signals Help You Move Beyond Walled Gardens and Build Smarter Custom Audiences  

By Garry Rosenfeldt, Senior Principal, Analytics, Insights & Strategy, Allant Group

In today’s hyper-competitive marketing environment, the old way of building audiences just doesn’t cut it anymore. We’re all seeing it – diminishing returns on paid search, declining performance from lookalikes, and increasing skepticism about the actual value of broad demographic targeting within walled gardens like Google and Facebook.

At Allant, we believe there’s a smarter, more effective way forward. And we saw that play out firsthand with one of our clients, a specialty golf retailer known for custom club fitting.

The Problem with “Good Enough” Targeting

When we first engaged with this client, their primary focus was on lower-funnel tactics relying heavily on Google’s suite of targeting tools to capture demand that already existed. Their campaigns were optimized around paid search, targeting lookalikes and people already searching for golf products.

That’s a perfectly logical approach, but it wasn’t scalable. It wasn’t generating new demand, and it certainly wasn’t cost-effective. They were fishing in the same pond as everyone else, using the same bait. The result? Rising acquisition costs and flatlining growth.

Our Challenge: Create Demand, Not Just Capture It

We proposed a different strategy: don’t just chase existing demand. Create it. That meant moving beyond simple demographic data and lookalikes. It meant building truly custom audiences based on behavioral intent signals, not just proximity to a store or income level.

We started by analyzing their existing customer file to identify demographic and behavioral patterns. But what made this effort game-changing was our ability to layer that data with digital intent signals. Digital intent signals are real-time behavioral cues that show when someone is actively researching products aligned to what the retailer offers.

We used AMP+ Fusion, Allant’s integrated data hub, to combine demographic profiles with online behavioral signals from sources like Eyeota. That allowed us to identify not only who to target, but when to reach them and at the precise moment their intent to purchase was highest.

The Results: Record-Setting Performance

We ran a proof of concept in late 2024. Within weeks, we saw conversion rates and bookings that exceeded anything the client had seen in the previous two years. So much so, in fact, that they ramped up media spend against our custom audiences.

The impact was profound. According to the client, it became the most successful campaign period in their history.

Why? Because we weren’t targeting just another list of affluent consumers near a store. We were identifying high-value prospects with active intent, some of whom weren’t even found in traditional compiled data sets.

What Made Our Custom Audiences Better?

This wasn’t just about more data. It was about better data and smarter integration. Here’s what made the difference:

• Multisource data: We used data from across the ecosystem, not just compiled lists. This allowed us to find people outside of typical datasets, i.e. individuals who would have remained invisible to traditional platforms.
• Triggered behavioral signals: We identified prospects based on their real-time online behavior, not just who they are demographically. This allowed us to pinpoint when to engage them.
• Predictive modeling: We built models that prioritized high-value prospects and signaled when they were most likely to act, cutting waste and boosting performance.
• Strategic media orchestration: We didn’t just deliver better audiences—we delivered a better plan. By combining custom audience intelligence with Allant’s deep expertise in digital media, we built a coherent, omnichannel strategy that aligned campaign activation with audience behavior. The result was a measurable, end-to-end approach that maximized media efficiency and campaign outcomes.

Rethinking What an Ideal Customer Looks Like

Interestingly, we also helped this retailer challenge their assumptions about who their ideal customers were. Originally, they believed their best segment was “empty-nesters”. But our analysis showed that “SINKS” (single-income, no kids) and “DINKs” (dual-income, no kids) were actually more engaged, more profitable, and more likely to convert.

That insight led to a more inclusive and effective targeting strategy, one that wouldn’t have been possible with legacy tools alone.

Refreshing the Audience, Sustaining the Growth

Another question we often hear: “How sustainable is this strategy?”

The beauty of using real-time behavioral signals is that our custom audiences refresh constantly. New people come into market every week, based on what they’re searching, browsing, or buying. It’s not a static list. It’s a living, breathing segment that evolves with consumer behavior.

We’re not just enabling one-off campaigns. We’re fueling an ongoing cycle of activation, measurement, and optimization.

Listening to the Data

We work closely with our clients’ analytics teams to monitor performance. Every two weeks, we match campaign responders back to our original audiences to see who converted, how much they spent, and what segments performed best. This closed-loop feedback allows us to refine both the audiences and the messaging in real time.

It’s not just about identifying the best prospects. It’s about activating them through the right channels, with the right message, at the right time and then adjusting as needed.

The Bigger Picture: Beyond Walled Gardens

This approach works because it spans the entire digital landscape, not just Google, not just Facebook. Whether it’s programmatic display, connected TV, or direct mail, our custom audiences are portable and effective across every channel.

And that’s the point. We’re not here to replace your digital agency or change your martech stack. We’re here to supercharge it with high-performing audiences that your competitors aren’t targeting.

Final Thought

The days of settling for broad, lookalike audiences are over. With the right data, the right intent signals, and a platform like AMP+, marketers can uncover net-new audiences, create demand, not just capture it, and dramatically improve campaign performance.

If you’re ready to move beyond the walled gardens and start reaching the customers your competitors don’t even see, let’s talk.