Once you’ve spent a few years working in PPC marketing, it starts to feel like all the available platforms are pretty darn similar when it comes to the advertising options available. But marketers know it’s the audience variation and the targeting options that come with those audiences that makes our job really fun. And Quora is no exception. Not only does it offer targeting options specific to its platform’s capabilities, like Questions Targeting, but it has an audience you won’t find on any other platform.

Quora offers several different options and tiers for hitting the exact audience you’re looking for, but in this post we’ll go in-depth on Audience Targeting. On Quora, Audience Targeting is essentially retargeting. You’re giving Quora a specific list of people based on website traffic, email addresses, or lookalike information and asking Quora to serve your ads to them.

As you’re looking for ways to refine your targeting on Quora, check out AdStage’s new Quora integration to make the management of everything that much easier. AdStage will help you analyze all your Quora Ads data to optimize within the network, as well as across other ad channels in your paid marketing program.

How is the audience on Quora different from other platforms?

Quora’s users skew male

As of the beginning of this year, Quora shared that its user base has a 43/57 female to male ratio .

Most Quora users visit via mobile

Mobile log-ons continue to increase for internet use across the board, but Quora says 75% of its users come to browse Q&As via their mobile devices.

Quora users report high incomes

According to Quora’s B2B Marketing Guide 54% of adult users report a household income >$100k

Most Quora users are highly educated

In fact, Quora reports that 65% of users have a college degree, and 28% have a graduate degree.

What are the audiences I can target within Quora Audience Targeting?

Quora Ads lets you create targeted audiences in three different ways:

1. Website Traffic Audience: An audience based on your website traffic to target or retarget.
2. List Match Audience: An audience based off a list of email addresses such as e-newsletter subscribers, a lead list, or existing customers.
3. Lookalike Audience: An audience based on an existing audience in the Quora Ads Manager.

Where will my targeted ads appear?

Ads will appear on users' personal feeds, Topic feeds, and question pages.

How do I set up Quora Audience Targeting?

Step-by-step instructions from Quora’s Audience Targeting Help Page.

Website Traffic Audience

1. Have the Quora Pixel set up to define retargeting rules. Website Traffic Audiences cannot be created without the Quora Pixel.
2. Go to Audiences → "Create Audience" → "Website Traffic"
3. Input an Audience Name and select how you want visitors to be added to this audience group.Target visitors by website traffic:
1. All visitors
2. Visitors to specific pages of my website
3. Visitors to specific but not all pages of my website
4. From a conversion or event
4. Wait up to 24 hours for the size to be calculated in the Audiences tab.
5. After creating an audience, you will then see an option to create an ad set specifically targeting that audience when creating an ad set from the Manage Ads tab.

List Match Audience

1. Go to Audiences → "Create Audience" → "List Match"
2. Upload a CSV file. No header is necessary, but each row should include a single email address that includes:
1. The email's domain name
2. No spaces or quotations around the email
3. Ex. example@email.com
3. Wait up to 24 hours for the size to be calculated in the Audiences tab.
4. To target that audience, create an ad set from the Manage Ads tab

Please note, the recommended minimum audience size is 200. The maximum number of rows per CSV file is 4 million. You may upload private customer data that you’ve already hashed using the SHA256 algorithm. Any customer data that you upload in plain-text will be hashed using the SHA256 algorithm locally in your browser before any customer data is transferred to our servers.

Lookalike Audience

1. Have a Website Traffic or List Match Audience in your Audiences tab.
2. Go to Audiences → "Create Audience" → "Lookalike"
3. Select the seed audience you would like to make a Lookalike of.
4. Wait up to 24 hours for the size to be calculated. The size of your audience is calculated when it is targeted in an ad set. It appears as the “Potential Impressions” metric under the ad set's “Summary”.
5. To target that audience, create an ad set from the Manage Ads tab

Please note, a Website Traffic Audience must have at least 3,000 people to be used for Lookalike Audiences. If your seed audience is a List Match Audience, it must have at least 500 people.

Each ad account can have up to 50 lookalike audiences at one time. If you hit that limit but wish to create more, you can delete an old lookalike audience you are no longer using.

What are best practices for Audience Targeting?

• Evaluate audience size. If you have a smaller audience, please keep in mind that it may have lower delivery.
• Customize your audience. Advertisers can create audiences based on specific pixel events or exclude existing audiences from their ad sets. For example, you can exclude a list of existing customers through a List Match Audience, or target users that set off an “Add to Cart” pixel.
• Test different percentages for Lookalike Audiences. There isn't a single best number to choose - the optimal outcome will vary depending on advertiser need. We recommend creating Lookalikes at 1%, 5%, and 10%. This allows you test test different ranges of specificity and volume.
  
  Selecting a higher number will give your ads higher potential delivery but potentially lower performance results, while selecting a lower number will make your ads more precisely targeted with higher performance results but potentially have lower delivery.
  
  If you're unsure what to choose, you can start by creating a 5% target similarity and run a test campaign targeting that lookalike audience. If performance is good and you want to try getting more reach, you can then create a new lookalike audience at a higher number for testing. If you want to try getting higher performance, you can do the opposite.

Expected results with Quora Audience Targeting

Since you’re targeting people who’ve already shown an affinity for what you’re selling, using a retargeting strategy like Audience Targeting, you can reasonably expect to have a high conversion rate, though don’t be surprised if conversion volume is low since you’re controlling how many people will see your ads based on the audience information you provide upfront.

And don’t forget to check out AdStage’s new Quora integration. With it, you can easily recall all of your campaign history, create custom dashboards to best understand your data, and automatically store, normalize, and connect your data in a single blended view with other ad networks like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more.