201. Activating High-Intent Audiences with Ed Hackney and Trinity Lawry from Pearl Diver

Most advertisers focus on people who are ready to buy today. But what happens when that audience runs out?

In this episode, I chat with Ed Hackney and Trinity Lawry from Pearl Diver about how to find high-intent audiences, why balancing every stage of the marketing funnel matters, and how AI is making audience discovery easier for media buyers. This podcast was made possible thanks to the incredible support from Pearl Diver.

• Why focusing only on conversions can quickly exhaust your audience.

• How behavioral data helps identify where consumers are in their buying journey.

• How Pearl Diver's AI tool, Reality Clusters, helps uncover new audience opportunities using simple prompts.

• Why combining third-party data with your DSP's native audiences can improve performance.

• Why asking questions about your data and being transparent with your partners leads to better campaign results.

This is like fishing in the same pond every day. If you never let new fish grow or explore new waters, eventually you'll stop catching anything.

Remember: The best programmatic strategies balance today's performance with tomorrow's growth.

We help historically excluded individuals break into programmatic media buying and land jobs they love. Through our Reach and Frequency® program, coaching, and community, we make learning programmatic clear, practical, and welcoming. Join once, stay learning forever. Past workshops, paid gems, and every new recording + resource added as we go. This library isn't a one-time thing, it's the full vault plus all future trainings, recordings, and guides. Access it here: https://www.heleneparker.com/library

🪶 Timestamps and Topics

• Welcome and Guest Introductions

• Trinity and Ed's Career Journeys

• Identifying High-Intent Audiences and Data Providers

• The Full Marketing Funnel and Avoiding Audience Burnout

• Common Media Buying Mistakes and Democratizing Data with AI (Reality Clusters)

• Best Practices for Audience Activation and Blending Data

• Translating Data into Insights for Leadership

• Partner Transparency and the "Going to the Doctor" Analogy

• Words of Wisdom: Embracing Change and Trusting Your Gut / Closing Remarks

Began her career in social media and digital agencies like DDB and Dentsu before transitioning to a global marketing team on the client side. She used this diverse background to help shape the vision for Pearl Diver, with a passion for democratizing data so that anyone can analyze audiences without needing a data scientist. Connect with Trinity: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trinity-lawry-55ba6586/

Spent 25 years in advertising, including time as a creative director and ECD for Digitas New Zealand. Fascinated by personalizing the customer journey at mass scale, he transitioned into the software and data side of ad tech to help build tools that empower agencies to discover better audience segmentation. Connect with Ed: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nomorepapercuts/

About Pearl Diver

Pearl Diver is an audience intelligence platform built for the agentic marketing era. It helps marketers discover high-intent audiences, uncover hidden buyer personas through Reality Clusters, and activate real-time audience segments directly in platforms like Meta, Google, TikTok, and leading DSPs. With its dedicated MCP connector, Pearl Diver also brings real-time audience insights into AI workflows, helping marketers make faster, smarter campaign decisions.

https://www.pearldiver.io/meet-michael-at-pearl-diver

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