Community-Focused Advertising

The Missing Number: Audience Relevance Score Changes Everything

Totemian R&D

•December 1, 2025

Marketing decisions grounded only in CPM often optimize for the cheapest thousand impressions rather than the most valuable thousand impressions, which can disadvantage culturally defined segments like Vancouver’s Iranian community. Audience Relevance Score (ARS) provides the necessary context to evaluate the true efficiency of media by weighting impressions according to who is actually being reached and why it matters for the brand. metricool+1

Audience Relevance Score as a Transformative Factor

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Would a decision‑maker choose to pay $10 to reach 1,000 random people, or $50 to reach 1,000 precisely matched community members who are more likely to respond? metricool
This choice becomes straightforward once ARS is applied to convert raw CPM into a business‑relevant cost per qualified exposure rather than a nominal cost per exposure. blipbillboards
Totemian Brand Boards are designed as a human‑centred medium to prioritize relevance in place and moment, enabling brands to show up “where business meets people” in the contexts that matter most.

Outline

Define Audience Relevance Score and establish why it is the missing variable when CPM is used to compare media across broad and niche audiences. kpidepot
Explain how ARS transforms CPM into a relevance‑adjusted metric for decision quality, especially in culturally specific markets. alooba
Demonstrate the calculation through worked examples of Vancouver media options to illustrate the shift from cost‑per‑impression to cost‑per‑relevant‑impression. metricool
Provide a practical worksheet to standardize ARS‑informed planning across channels, including Brand Boards. setupad

Defining Audience Relevance Score

Audience Relevance Score (ARS) is the percentage of a channel’s impressions that credibly fall within the intended buyer segment, based on audience characteristics, context, language, and place of exposure. ARS adapts familiar notions of “ad relevance” into a channel‑agnostic input for planning, so an advertiser can normalize media choices by who sees the message, not only how many see it. In community contexts, ARS captures the quality dimension of exposure that CPM alone does not, making it central to responsible media allocation. instapage+2

How to compute ARS and True CPM

Not every impression is valuable. Some reach the right audience — others don’t. To measure true effectiveness, we can use two connected metrics:

Audience Relevance Score (ARS)
This tells us what percentage of impressions are likely being seen by the intended target audience. A higher ARS means the placement is more accurate and relevant.

True CPM
Traditional CPM only measures cost per thousand impressions. True CPM adjusts that cost based on ARS — so we see what we’re actually paying for every thousand impressions that matter. If a channel has strong audience relevance, its True CPM will be lower than a channel with weak targeting, even if its standard CPM looks higher.

Worked examples: Vancouver media options

The following examples are illustrative to show decision logic; planners should replace inputs with current quotes, traffic data, and observed audience shares in each corridor or venue. metricool

City Bus Exterior (broad transit reach)
- Assumptions: CPM = $12; estimated ARS = 5% for Iranian buyer fit given broad circulation and low cultural specificity. metricool
- Calculation: Adjusted for only 5% audience relevance, the effective cost becomes $240 per thousand qualified impressions.
- Advisory note: Low CPM can conceal high audience waste when the majority of exposures fall outside the intended cultural or language cohort. alooba
Community Persian Media (niche print/digital)
- Assumptions: CPM = $50; estimated ARS = 95% due to language, content, and distribution in Persian‑forward channels. instapage
- Calculation: With 95% audience relevance, the effective cost is about $53 per thousand qualified impressions, demonstrating strong efficiency versus broad transit media.
- Advisory note: A higher CPM can be the superior economic choice when fit, language accessibility, and cultural trust are embedded in the medium. kpidepot
Totemian Brand Boards (digital brandboards in community hubs)
- Assumptions: CPM = $35; estimated ARS = 85% owing to selective placement in Iranian‑trafficked micro‑locations and context‑aware content rotation.
- Calculation: With 85% audience relevance, the effective cost is about $41 per thousand qualified impressions, indicating strong efficiency with targeted, place-based exposure.
- Advisory note: Brand Boards operationalize “Precise Presence in Mass Markets” by aligning brand communication with the right neighbourhoods, venues, and moments.

How ARS improves decision quality

ARS rebalances planning from “cheapest per thousand” to “most aligned per thousand,” a shift that is vital when audience definition and cultural context drive response, trust, and downstream conversion. For Iranian‑focused campaigns, ARS makes transparent the trade‑off between broad exposure and qualified exposure, enabling budgets to be directed toward media that reliably reach the intended community. This is consistent with Totemian’s approach to “Make marketing count through context‑aware contents” and “Relating with Locals” via Brand Boards that place brands in meaningful proximity to people. kpidepot+1

Planner’s worksheet: Relevance‑adjusted media comparison

Use the following standardized steps to evaluate any channel for a defined community segment, and retain the worksheet for post‑campaign learning loops. setupad

Step 1 — Define the segment: demographics, language preferences, neighbourhood corridors, cultural moments, and decision contexts relevant to the category. alooba
Step 2 — Collect inputs: channel quotes for CPM, estimated impressions, and any available audience composition data from publishers or third‑party sources. metricool
Step 3 — Estimate ARS (%): justify the estimate using context (location), content (language/culture), and past response indicators; document the rationale and any assumptions. integralads
Step 4 — Compute relevance-adjusted cost: Convert CPM into a True CPM by adjusting for audience relevance, then rank channels from lowest to highest to see which placements deliver the most qualified impressions for the budget. setupad
Step 5 — Decide and monitor: prioritize channels with favorable True CPM and sufficient reach, set measurement plans, and capture outcomes to refine ARS estimates over time. blipbillboards

Advisory conclusion

In community‑defined markets, the quality of who sees the message is the essence of media effectiveness, and ARS is the practical tool that brings this quality into the cost equation. By standardizing ARS in planning, advertisers can align budgets with channels that deliver proximity, language relevance, and cultural trust—turning presence into outcomes rather than just impressions into hopes. Totemian Brand Boards are purpose‑built to support this approach through a human‑centred medium that enables “Brand Positioning; Literally!” in the neighbourhoods and moments that matter most. kpidepot+1

References: Definitions and usage of CPM, ad relevance concepts, and qualified/quality impressions; Totemian Brand Board positioning and human‑centred copywriting principles. instapage+5T