Why AI Audiences Is the New Standard for Agencies, Media Planners & Programmatic Traders

If you work in an agency or on a programmatic team, you know the pain:

• Long email threads just to get one custom segment.
• Clicking through endless taxonomies to find “something close enough.”
• Struggling to explain audience logic to clients in a simple, transparent way.

AI Audiences by OnAudience was created to fix exactly that. It’s an AI-driven builder that turns a short campaign brief into a ready-to-activate custom segment in seconds – using OnAudience’s global, privacy-safe data.

Below is how it works, why it fits into modern media planning workflows, and where it can slot straight into your existing stack.

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What Is AI Audiences?

AI Audiences is an online tool (available at ai.onaudience.com) that automates custom audience creation from a brief for programmatic advertising campaigns.

In simple terms, it lets you:

• Paste a campaign brief or write a short description of your target audience.
• Select a campaign goal (Awareness, Consideration, Conversion).
• Get a tailored custom segment built on billions of data points.
• Save, manage and publish those segments directly into supported platforms.

Instead of manually constructing segments, you describe the audience in normal language. The AI interprets it, maps it to real behavioral and demographic data, and returns a transparent custom segment you can show to clients or directly launch on a chosen DSP. 

Check a case study

How AI Audiences Works: From Brief to Live Segment

The core idea is simple: you paste the brief – AI builds the segment.

1. Paste your campaign brief

In the AI Audiences interface, you enter the key details of your campaign, for example:

• Objective (awareness, consideration, conversion)
• Target audience description
• Geo and language
• Devices / environments (web, in-app, CTV, retail media, etc.)
• Any must-include or must-exclude behaviors

You write this in normal, human language. There’s no need to know taxonomy codes or any special logic.

2. Let AI build your custom segment

An engine powered by LLMs reads your brief, understands your intent, and instantly proposes a segment, including:

• A clear audience description and targeting logic.
• Demographic breakdowns (age, gender, location – where available).
• Interest & intent signals (topics, behaviors, purchase intent).
• Brand affinities, keywords and sample URLs behind the segment.
• Estimated reach with ranges or geo visualizations on key platforms.

Because everything is based on top of OnAudience’s high-resolution data, the result isn’t a generic group, it reflects real behaviors across websites, apps and devices.

3. Review, refine and approve

You’re always in control. You can:

• Adjust geos or demographics.
• Narrow or broaden the logic for precision vs. reach.
• Save different variants per KPI (e.g. upper-funnel vs. performance).

This is useful not only for activation, but also at the planning and proposal stage – you can quickly pull transparent audience logic and estimated reach for client requests and campaign planning decks.

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Why AI Audiences Is Ideal for Agencies & Programmatic Teams

1. Speed: from days to seconds

Building a custom audience the traditional way can take days of:

• Manual taxonomy work,
• Back-and-forth with data partners,
• Waiting for approvals.

AI Audiences compresses that into seconds. The AI reads the brief, scans millions of data points, and proposes a segment instantly.

What that means for your agency team:

• Faster campaign launches,
• More time spent on strategy and creative, not segment creation,
• Ability to handle more briefs per planner without adding headcount,
• Enables a quick response with a ready-to-show segment to your client.
  

2. Transparency you can show to clients

Every AI-built segment comes with clear documentation:

• Which signals and behaviors were used.
• Example domains, categories and interests.
• Demographic and geographic breakdowns.

This makes it easier to:

• Explain targeting logic behind the custom audience segment.
• Justify CPMs and data fees.
• Build trust with clients who now expect visibility into audience construction

Instead of “trust us, it works,” you can show exactly how the audience is defined.

3. Precision at global scale

AI Audiences provides precision and reach, so you receive: 

• High-intent behaviors and granular interests
• Cross-device reach (laptops, mobile, CTV/OTT devices)
• Local segments for a single country
• Multi-country or regional audiences for global campaigns.
  

4. Privacy-safe audience building

The data behind AI Audiences is processed with strong privacy controls and aligned with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA.

For agencies, brands and traders, that means:

• Access to rich, GDPR compliant data
• Compliance built into the audience-building process
• Confidence when planning cross-border and multi-market campaigns

You get powerful targeting without compromising on privacy standards.

5. Built for modern media planning workflows

AI Audiences is designed around how agencies actually work in 2025: tight deadlines, fee pressure and constant reporting demands.

You can use it to:

• Build segments for any client requests and segment proposals
• Quickly test audience hypotheses without heavy manual setup.
• Adjust audiences mid-flight based on performance insights.

Standardize audience logic across teams, regions and DSPs.

Where AI Audiences Fits in Your Stack

AI Audiences doesn’t replace your DSP – it supercharges it.

You keep using your preferred buying platforms (The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP, Microsoft Advertising etc.), but you offload the heavy lifting of audience construction to an AI engine. 

For DSP-first teams

• Create AI-built segments directly from campaign briefs.
• Push them straight into your advertiser or partner platform.
• Optimize bids, creatives and pacing in the DSP as usual.

For curation-heavy teams

• Use AI Audiences to define the right signals and logic.
• Package them into curated deals for specific DSPs or publishers.

In both cases, AI Audiences becomes the “audience brain” for your programmatic stack: one place where audience logic is created, tested and managed from a single dashboard. 

Supercharge your campaign

Top Use Cases for AI-Built Custom Segments

Here are some common scenarios where AI Audiences delivers quick wins for agencies, media planners and programmatic traders:

Brand awareness campaigns

• Broad, but still relevant reach around lifestyle, interests or vertical themes
• Easy to show clients how you defined their “ideal customer” at scale

Performance & direct response campaigns

• High-intent audiences based on recent behaviors and signals linked to conversions
• Ability to create more granular performance segments from the same brief (e.g. “cart abandoners”, “repeat purchasers”, “churn risks”)

Seasonal peaks (Black Friday, Christmas, Prime Day, etc.)

• Quickly create shoppers around time-sensitive intent and product categories
• Test multiple audience variants for different KPIs (ROAS vs. reach)

Event-based activations (e.g. sports tournaments, concerts, festivals)

• Reach fans reading news, streaming content or researching tickets and travel
• Build segments that combine passion points, locations and purchase intent

B2B campaigns

• Tailor segments around industry, company size and other firmographic signals (where available)
• Layer behavior data on top (research patterns, content consumption, etc.)

Because you can generate multiple variants from the same brief, A/B testing different audience definitions per KPI becomes much easier.

How to Use AI Audiences: A Simple Workflow

1. Log in to ai.onaudience.com (or start in the open, test version).
2. Paste your campaign brief or write a short description of your target audience.
3. Choose your campaign goal (Awareness, Consideration, Conversion).
4. Review the suggested segment: logic, demographics, interests, domains and reach.
5. Adjust and refine until you’re satisfied.
6. Save the segment and publish it to supported platforms.

From there, you optimize inside your DSP as usual.

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Start Building AI Audiences from Your Next Brief

AI Audiences by OnAudience is designed for teams that need:

• Custom audiences, not generic off-the-shelf segments.
• Faster turnaround from brief to launch.
• Transparent, privacy-safe data they can confidently present to clients.
• One workflow to power multiple DSPs and markets.

If you want your next campaign to move from idea to AI-built segment in seconds, AI Audiences is built for you.

Q&A for Agencies and Programmatic Traders

Is AI Audiences free to use?
You can try the tool in an open version for free. To save, edit and publish segments into platforms like The Trade Desk or Amazon DSP, you’ll need a free account that you can create by sending a request on https://ai.onaudience.com/register

Which platforms does AI Audiences integrate with?
AI Audiences supports activation into major advertising platforms, including The Trade Desk and Amazon DSP, Microsoft, Adobe, Audigent, LiveRamp, Equativ, Magnite, PubMatic, Yahoo and more. To get the full list contact our team: contact@onaudience.com 

Do I need to be a data expert to use it?
No. The whole point is that you write your audience in normal language. The AI interprets it, maps it to real behavioral and demographic data, and returns a transparent custom segment.

How long does it take for a segment to go live in my DSP?
Typically, your segment appears within 24 hours after publishing it in AI Audiences. In some cases and platforms, activation can be faster, often under 24 hours.

Is AI Audiences privacy-compliant?
Yes. AI Audiences provides only privacy-safe data aligned with regulations such as GDPR and other market standards.

Check a case study