What Does Tunnl Do? Pioneering Audience Intelligence for Issue-Based Advertising

Sara Fagen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Tunnl.
As an advertiser, you have a story to tell, and the environment you're tasked with navigating to get that story in front of the right people -- where they're most likely to engage with it -- isn't getting any simpler.
Ever-increasing and difficult-to-predict media fragmentation complicates media buying and budget allocation for brands, trade associations, advocacy groups, nonprofits, and their agencies alike.
Now, everyone is expected to communicate about hot-button social issues.
All while your budget is being squeezed and the pressure to maximize the effectiveness of every invested dollar has hardly ever seemed higher.
Tunnl is here to help, and this article tells you how.
What is Tunnl?
Tunnl delivers AI-powered prebuilt and custom audiences in an audience intelligence platform equipped with audience insights and real-time audience intelligence tools to help advertisers plan strategic media buys and buy against industry-leading audience data across the ad platforms and DSPs native to your process.
Tunnl builds AI-powered prebuilt and custom audiences and insights for advertisers and their agencies that help them identify, understand, and connect with groups of people in America based on how they feel about different issues like gun control, big tech regulation, and corporate social responsibility.
At Tunnl, "audiences" are lists of identifiable adults grouped together based on how they feel about an issue.
"Audience insights" are the super-actionable information delivered about each audience in the form of an interactive dashboard. But what kind of information is included?
Tunnl's audience insights cross the two most important types of audience insights for public affairs, issue advocacy, purpose-driven marketing, and cause marketing campaign success:
- Demographic insights: who the group of people is that feels a particular way
- Media consumption insights: where that group of people consumes media from social and streaming to linear TV
Audience insights come in different styles for different advertisers and their agencies. Start with free, prebuilt audiences, advance to extra-niche custom audiences, and then venture onto solving the most complex challenges like linear optimization and paid and earned media measurement dashboards.
All audience insights are accessible from inside the Tunnl platform. Subscriptions start at $0/month for unlimited access to all of our hundreds of prebuilt audiences and range upwards of $10,000/month for solutions to the most complex targeting challenges.
Activate your Tunnl data in your digital ad platforms to buy against seamlessly across digital campaigns.
Who is Tunnl For?
Tunnl's audience insights are for advertisers and their agencies working on public affairs, issue advocacy, purpose-driven marketing, and cause marketing campaigns and spending money on one or more of these advertising mediums...
- Social media
- Programmatic digital
- Advanced TV and streaming TV options like over-the-top (OTT), connected TV (CTV), and addressable TV
- Linear TV including local broadcast and cable
Advertisers and their agencies who benefit from Tunnl's audience insights face challenges like...
- Trying to reach influential figures like policymakers and staff, members of the media, and investors
- Struggling to use consistent data across a variety of different platforms, including walled gardens, DSPs, and traditional television
- Attempting to identify the ideal media mix for their campaign, especially between traditional linear TV and advanced TV or streaming
- Looking to reach individuals who are persuadable on a particular topic, especially associated with issues and causes related to policy or politics
- Trying to recruit advocates in support of a cause
- Looking to identify individuals who are most reachable on specific platforms, from social media to broadcast television
Tunnl is not an agency.
Tunnl does not buy or place media. Instead, we work with advertisers' agencies to empower them with the best audience insights available so that they can do their best work for you.
How Does Tunnl Help?
Tunnl's audience insights help advertisers and their agencies get their messaging in front of the right people. Built with the highest-quality data about the attitudes and behaviors of adults in the United States, advertisers and their agencies can trust Tunnl's insights to be up-to-date, accurate, and compliant.
All of Tunnl's audience insights are built with...

- Routinely conducted surveys on topics like corporate social responsibility, purpose-driven marketing, issue advocacy, public affairs, and politics
- In-house national and consumer voter files
- Thousands of behavioral variables
- Observed data from devices like cable set-top boxes, smart TVs, connected devices, and TV guides
- 20 years of proprietary data
- Machine learning
Insights provided by Tunnl's audiences include...
- How likely are they to care about your issue?
- How likely are they able to be reached on particular platforms like social media, streaming and advanced TV, or linear television?
- How likely are they to be persuaded by your message?
Where Can You Access Tunnl's Audience Insights?
Tunnl's audience insights are accessible inside the Tunnl platform. Match different Tunnl platform tiers with your particular audience insight needs.
- For $0 with a Tunnl Free account, get unlimited access to hundreds of prebuilt audiences including national media mix insights and the Advanced Search to slice, dice, and layer different audiences to create new, custom audiences based on your own combinations of issues and geographies. We built this tier for advertisers and agencies planning or buying
campaigns across multiple digital channels.
- Starting at $5,000/month with Tunnl Plus, get more granular, local media mix breakdowns and linear and streaming TV insights. Build precise, layered audiences quickly with the Audience Builder, an upgraded version of Tunnl Free's Advanced Search that enables demographic filtering, targeting based on geographic radiuses, and enables advertisers to save their DIY custom audiences for future media planning and send them to colleagues for seamless collaboration. We built this tier for advertisers and agencies planning or buying campaigns across multiple digital channels, streaming TV, and/or some linear TV.
- Starting at $10,000/month with Tunnl Premium, get audience-specific TV ratings for data-driven linear optimization as well as incremental reach and paid and earned media tracking dashboards for cross-screen planning. We built this tier for advertisers and agencies planning or buying campaigns across multiple digital channels, streaming TV, and/or extensive linear TV.
Why Tunnl?
Advertisers and media buyers who use Tunnl's AI-powered audiences and insights are most likely to connect with the people who want to hear their message and are most likely to act on it.
Tunnl's audience insights paint a complete and easy-to-interpret picture of who in the United States feels a particular way about different issues + where those people consume media. Knowing both enables you to get your message in front of the right people, right away.
Ready to Get Started?
Peruse Tunnl's Learning Center to keep learning from in-depth educational articles including the following:
- How to Use Tunnl Audiences to Guide Your Outreach Strategy
- Prebuilt vs. Custom Audiences: Which Is Best for You?
- Which Tunnl Platform Tier is Best for You & Your Campaigns?
- How Tunnl Works with Agencies: What You Should (And Should Not) Expect
- How Does Tunnl Build Audiences?