Contact-level advertising
Contact-level advertising targets named individuals inside a target account rather than the account as a whole. Ads are served to specific people and engagement is reported per person, so a marketer can see which three members of a buying committee of eight actually responded, rather than only that the account showed activity.
How does it differ from account-based advertising?
Account-based advertising reaches a company, usually through IP targeting or firmographic audience filters, and infers that the right people saw it. Contact-level advertising starts from a list of named individuals and reports against those names. The first tells you an account engaged. The second tells you who.
What does it require?
A list of the right individuals, before you start. That means a prospecting and enrichment layer upstream, and it is the reason contact-level programmes cost more than the advertising line suggests. If you do not already know the buying committee, the advertising tool is not the missing piece.
What should you check before buying?
Two things buyers rarely ask. First, whether contact-level matching is deterministic or probabilistic, and what share of an uploaded list actually matches. Second, which channels the impressions genuinely run on, since not every ad network permits targeting a named individual. Ask for delivery reporting broken down by channel.
For how the platforms in this category compare, see Influ2 alternatives.
