Left Hand Agency CPG High Five: Top 5 CPG Digital Targeting Strategies That Influence How Consumers Buy

You can write a book with the amount of jargon there is in digital advertising! It can feel like digital marketers are throwing around acronyms just to poke fun at everyone else who isn’t “in the know.”

When I first started buying programmatic I learned there actually is a shared language. And knowing that language is imperative to everything from campaign naming conventions to how your digital plans are structured. 

There’s a lot of jargon in how digital advertising can target consumers. But, digital targeting isn’t just about reaching people for CPG brands. It’s about reaching buyers in the moments that actually influence purchase, both online and in-store.

Here are the five most important targeting strategies, translated through a CPG lens:

1. Behavioral Targeting (BT)

Despite the word behavior, this form of targeting can cover everything from your age, salary, net worth, and more. Behavioral targeting is any form of targeting that uses a data set curated to reach a certain set of shoppers based on key attributes. 

Here’s an example:

I’m a marketer trying to sell high-end backpacking trips through Europe. I want to target Adults 35-54 who have a high net worth and have purchased backpacking gear in the past year. To do this, I’d use three behavioral data sets: 

1. Demographic targeting 

2. Income / net worth targeting

3. Past purchase targeting

Targeting capabilities go far beyond browsing behavior for CPG. They increasingly include retail media data, meaning actual purchase signals from retailers like Amazon, Walmart, or Instacart.

That means brands can target people based on:

• Products they’ve purchased

• Categories they frequently shop

• Brand switching behavior

For example, a shopper who regularly buys plant-based milk can be targeted with ads for a new oat milk brand across retail media networks or even off-site channels.

This is one of the most powerful tools in CPG because it connects media directly to real purchase behavior, not just intent.

2. Contextual Targeting

This is targeting based on what someone is currently consuming, not their past behavior. This type of targeting is the closest to classic advertising targeting—things like knowing people watching Oprah are more likely to be females based on past research.

In the digital realm this translates to what type of consumers visit a website. It can be very valuable especially for sensitive goods and services. What better place to advertise a new sugar substitute than inside a blog with recipes for diabetics? 

Contextual targeting is powerful because it places ads alongside content that is contextually relevant to the product, without relying on personal data.

For CPG, this is especially useful for:

• Driving discovery for new products

• Aligning with lifestyle moments like fitness, family meals, or entertaining

3. Remarketing

Remarketing is often considered one of the more invasive forms of ad targeting. We don’t like to think that we’re being “digitally followed” online but the reality is, nearly every website you visit is using technology to track site visitors. 

At its core, remarketing is targeting people who have already interacted with your brand or category online, and bringing them back to convert.

In practice, remarketing can take several forms:

• Site visit remarketing: Re-engaging users who visited your brand site or product pages

• Search remarketing: Targeting users based on past search behavior (e.g., “best protein snacks”)

• Retail remarketing: Reaching shoppers who viewed or purchased products on retailer platforms

• Cart abandonment: Nudging users who added to cart but didn’t complete purchase

For CPG brands sold online, remarketing is often a critical component of closing more sales. It’s cheap to remarket to prior site visitors because you own that data. However, for brands sold primarily in-store, site visit remarketing is more about reinforcing the brand vs finalizing a conversion. 

4. Geoframing

This is targeting based on where people have been in the past. Imagine you wanted to reach people with your new high-end meal replacement aimed at elite athletes, you could geoframe past IronMan competitions. 

Geoframing can reach people based on: 

1. Where they shop regularly 

2. What types of stores they frequent 

3. Where they travel 

4. What kinds of events they attend 

Example: A shopper who frequently visits Whole Foods and boutique fitness studios might be targeted with premium wellness or organic CPG products.

Geoframing helps CPG brands approximate shopper profile and intent in the real world, even outside of retailer data environments.

Many people feel geoframing and fencing are an invasion of privacy and there are definitely ethical concerns. Sometimes what you can do isn’t what you should do. 

5. Geofencing

This is targeting people based on their real-time location within a defined area.

A virtual boundary is set around a specific place, like a grocery store, competitor location, or event, and ads are triggered when someone enters that zone.

Example: Targeting people attending an auto show with ads promoting a new car being featured on the floor. 

This tactic can be used for supporting retail promotions in real time for CPG brands, especially if it’s across a retailer chain where the fence can capture shoppers with some scale. 

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What these CPG Digital Targeting Strategies mean for our agency?

At Left Hand Agency we’ve deployed these CPG digital targeting strategies for brands and businesses. Part of the fun of media buying is how we can creatively use technology to target your most–likely consumers. Used in conjunction with other forms of advertising, targeted digital can make your media plan more efficient and effective. 

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We’re Left Hand Agency. We help CPG brands grow by making people remember you and buy you. We believe in marketing science over BS dashboards—and in incrementality over just velocity. Because moving faster isn’t growth if you’re just chasing the same customers. Let's grow together.