From a description
Describe who you want to reach, in plain English, and Watt finds the signals and assembles an audience optimized for your outcome.
The default way into Build an audience: describe who you want to reach, in plain English, and Watt finds the signals behind the description and builds them toward your goal.
/watt:audience build me an audience of weekend hikers in Colorado, around 2M people/watt:audience the highest-intent people in-market for solar/watt:audience the widest credible audience for a meal-kit launch
What a good brief looks like
The single highest-leverage skill in Watt is the brief. The graph indexes what people do, so a brief needs at least one defining behavior, interest, or intent — demographics narrow an audience; they don't define one. If you bring only demographics, Watt will ask what these people are doing or into before anything builds.
| Weak brief | What's missing | A brief that builds |
|---|---|---|
| "women 25–34 in Texas" | All filters, no definition — who are they? | "women 25–34 in Texas researching fertility clinics" |
| "affluent homeowners" | Labels, not behavior | "homeowners getting solar quotes, skewing high home value" |
| "the fitness segment" | A vendor category, not a signal | "people who joined a gym or bought home-gym equipment in the last 90 days" |
Three kinds of statement do the work, and you make them in plain words:
- Defining signals — what makes someone belong: "they're comparing meal-kit services."
- Must-haves — what everyone in the set has, no exceptions: "everyone has to be a homeowner", "in the Nashville metro." A place is just a must-have.
- Exclusions — who to leave out: "not industry professionals." Confirmed with you before they're applied.
Pick what you're optimizing for
The same brief can become very different audiences. What you're optimizing for picks how Watt builds it:
| You want | You say | How Watt builds it |
|---|---|---|
| A size band | "about 1–5M people who…" | Signals are added one at a time, reach measured after every step, until the audience lands inside your band. The default when you've floated a number. |
| Maximum credible reach | "the widest credible audience", "top-of-funnel" | The widest pool the credible signals support — flagged honestly if it swells toward everyone. For awareness, when bigger genuinely is better. |
| The highest-intent few | "in-market", "ready to buy" | Measures which signals most over-index against your must-haves and keeps the highest-propensity slice. For conversion, when precision beats volume. |
| Where they cluster | "where do these people concentrate", "break them down by region" | Splits the audience into its best-concentrated groups along the dimension you name. For events, site selection, regional planning. |
| A lead list across the employment graph | "in-market companies", "employees of these firms" | Builds a seed audience, then crosses to its employers — or from companies to their people — keeping the set that qualifies. |
Not sure which? Say what the audience is for — the campaign goal usually settles it, and Watt will ask when it's genuinely open. From here the build follows the shared flow — find the signals, see how they score, shape your stack, build and measure.
Build an audience
You've seen what the graph holds. /watt:audience turns it into an actual audience — build it, analyze who's in it, and activate it.
From a list
Bring a list you already own and Watt expands it, learns what defines it, or slices it by intent — and every play chains with the rest of the build.