Building audiences from an RFP

---
name: rfp-audience-response
description: "Answer an advertiser RFP or media brief by building and sizing audiences in Permutive, reported in a consistent per-audience format, with supporting evidence gathered only once the recommendation is accepted. Use when given an RFP, brief, or set of audience requirements to build against."
---

# Answering an RFP with audiences

The reader is the analyst preparing the response. Assume they know the trade and have read the brief — explain neither back to them. Give them figures they can quote, a build they can check, and the caveats they would want to catch before the response goes out.

## Steps

1. **Analyse the brief.** Pull out the market, the audience requirements, the minimum deliverables each audience must hit, and the evidence the response will have to contain. Note which requirements are additive and which are alternatives.

2. **Find matching cohorts.** Search Permutive for cohorts answering each requirement in turn. Where a cohort family has several depth or recency variants, take the whole family unless the brief narrows the stage of the journey.

3. **Compose and iterate.** Build each audience, measure it against its minimum, and refine until it meets the requirement — or until you can say precisely why it cannot. Look for additional reach only where a minimum is unmet.

4. **Recommend, then stop.** Put the audiences forward and get agreement before doing the evidence work. Breakdowns for an audience nobody has signed off on are wasted effort, and the build may change first.

## Reporting the audiences

Open with one line saying whether each audience meets what the brief asked of it.

Then give every audience the same shape, so they can be read side by side:

```
## Audience 1: <short name>

<One sentence describing these people as a persona.>

* **Reach** — <N> users
* **Inventory** — <N> page views over the measured window
* **Against the brief** — <clears / falls short of> the <N> minimum by <N>%
* **Targeted Cohorts** — Users in <composition, using cohort names joined by AND / OR / NOT>
```

Keep the same bullets, in the same order, for every audience. Add a bullet only if the brief asked for something these do not cover, and then add it to all of them.

Close with at most three things worth catching before the response goes out, one sentence each, and one line asking whether to gather the evidence the brief asks for. A requirement satisfied by modelled attributes rather than observed behaviour usually belongs there, as does a signal that turns out to contribute almost nothing.

Name the cohorts in the composition, as above. Keep the raw expression of short ids out of the summary and supply it on request.

### Worked example

> ## Audience 1: Remortgage-ready homeowners
>
> Homeowners in their thirties and forties comparing rates and running affordability calculators, who have not just completed a purchase.
>
> * **Reach** — 84,000 users
> * **Inventory** — 412,000 page views (30 days)
> * **Against the brief** — clears the 50,000 minimum by 68%
> * **Targeted Cohorts** — Users in (Mortgage Intenders AND Homeowners AND Adults 30+) NOT Recent Completions
>
> ## Audience 2: Rate-watchers
>
> The same intent behaviour without the age or income filters, carrying reach rather than precision.
>
> * **Reach** — 610,000 users
> * **Inventory** — 3,050,000 page views (30 days)
> * **Against the brief** — clears the 500,000 minimum by 22%
> * **Targeted Cohorts** — Users in Mortgage Intenders NOT Recent Completions

## Ask rather than guess

Ask when the answer would change the build and the brief does not settle it:

- A requirement that reads as either additive or alternative
- A minimum that cannot be met where more than one requirement could be relaxed, and the choice is the buyer's to make
- A trade-off between reach and precision with no stated preference
- Which workspace or market the brief refers to, where more than one fits

Ask once, put your own recommendation alongside the question, and proceed on that recommendation if no answer comes.

## Reporting the evidence

Once the recommendation is accepted, work through the evidence items the brief asked for, and nothing it did not. If the build changed first, re-measure before reporting.

## Style

- Bullets, not prose. One sentence per bullet where you can, never more than two.
- Each response should fit one screen. Offer further depth in a closing line rather than including it.
- Index on a base of 100, with confidence stated before the figure.
- Give cohort contributions as absolute users rather than percentage shares, since they overlap.
- State the measurement window once, and say so if you extrapolate it to the flight length.