By incorporating audience segment targeting into your ad groups, you can effectively reach individuals based on their demographic characteristics, interests, behaviors, ongoing research, or past interactions with your business.
Leveraging audience segment targeting can enhance your campaign’s efficacy by connecting with potential customers who are browsing websites, utilizing apps, or watching videos.
For optimal results, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with the personalized advertising policy, which was previously referred to as interest-based advertising, to enhance the experience for both users and advertisers.
How it works
Audience targeting is employed across various campaigns including Display, Search, Video, Hotel, and Standard Shopping. It involves creating groups of people with specific interests, intentions, and demographic information, which are estimated by Google and referred to as segments.
When adding an audience to a campaign or ad group, you can choose from a diverse range of segments such as fans of sports and travel, car shoppers, or people who have previously visited your website or app. Google Ads will display ads to individuals who are likely to be in the selected categories.
To target users on third-party websites and apps, they are categorized based on their activity on these platforms. Similarly, to target users on Google’s own products, they are segmented based on their activity on these products.
It’s worth noting that the data utilized to generate audience segments, such as past Google searches or website visit history, can also be used to enhance the bidding and targeting of your audience campaigns.
Audience segment types
Please find below a brief overview of the various types of audience segments that can be employed to target your campaigns effectively:
- Affinity Segments: This type of segment helps you reach users based on their interests, habits, and passions.
- Custom Segments: You can create custom segments by entering relevant keywords, URLs, and apps to target your ideal audience.
- Detailed Demographics: This segment allows you to reach users based on their long-term life facts such as age, gender, and income.
- Life Events: This segment targets users who are in the midst of important life milestones such as getting married or moving to a new city.
- In-Market: This segment targets users who have recently shown purchase intent for products or services similar to those you offer.
- Your Data
Available audience segment types for each campaign
Display
- Affinity segments: Yes
- Custom segments: Yes
- Detailed demographics: Yes
- Life events: Yes
- In-market: Yes
- Your data: Yes
Search
- Affinity segments: Yes
- Custom segments: No
- Detailed demographics: Yes
- Life events: No
- In-market: Yes
- Your data: Yes
Video
- Affinity segments: Yes
- Custom segments: Yes
- Detailed demographics: Yes
- Life events: Yes
- In-market: Yes
- Your data: Yes
Hotel
- Affinity segments: No
- Custom segments: No
- Detailed demographics: No
- Life events: No
- In-market: No
- Your data: Yes
Standard Shopping
- Affinity segments: Yes
- Custom segments: No
- Detailed demographics: Yes
- Life events: No
- In-market: Yes
- Your data: Yes
Please note that in Performance Max campaigns, audience signals can be incorporated into the campaign to facilitate machine learning and identify users who are most likely to convert. Nevertheless, this does not guarantee that ads will exclusively be displayed to users within these audiences. If other user segments are found to be converting well, ads may be shown to users outside of those specified in the audience signals.
Audience targeting options
After you have determined the interests, needs, behaviors, and objectives of your target audience, you can establish who your audience will be for a specific campaign or ad group. You have the option to choose from preconfigured segments provided by Google Ads.
Affinity segments
Affinity segments allow you to target individuals based on a comprehensive understanding of their lifestyles, interests, and habits. This segment comprises people who have displayed a genuine interest in a particular subject, enabling you to reach the most relevant audience for your products or services.
Affinity segments are available for use in Search, Display, Standard Shopping, Video campaigns, as well as Gmail and Display & Video 360, and are accessible to all Google advertisers.
If you want to access a selected collection of affinity categories, you can download this CSV file.
Life events
Life events offer an opportunity to connect with audiences on YouTube, Gmail, and Display during significant milestones such as graduating from college, moving to a new home, or getting married. By understanding when these events are happening, you can customize your advertising to target the appropriate audience with relevant messages.
Life events are less frequent than other milestones and may consequently reach a smaller audience compared to affinity segments. However, since life events often correspond with multiple related purchasing decisions, the segment can be more significant than the in-market segment, which corresponds with a single purchasing decision.
For example, someone who is preparing to move will likely purchase new furniture, moving services, mortgages, and other related items during the months leading up to their move.
In-market segments
In-market segments allow you to target potential customers who are actively researching and considering purchasing products or services similar to yours.
This segment is particularly suitable for advertisers who are focused on driving conversions from customers who are most likely to make a purchase. In-market segments are designed to reach consumers who are close to completing a purchase.
You can download a curated list of in-market segments in CSV format to help you target the right audience.
Custom segments
Custom segments provide the flexibility to define and reach your ideal audience by entering specific keywords, URLs, and apps related to your product or service. They are available in Display, Discovery, Gmail, Standard Shopping, and Video campaigns.
By setting up a custom segment, you can target users who are likely to be interested in your product or service based on their online behavior.
The system uses signals such as campaign goals and bidding strategy to interpret your custom segment and choose a focused segment for you. You can choose from three different segments: reach, consideration, and performance.
For example, a pet store owner may want to reach out to a specific group of customers who have recently adopted a new pet. With a custom segment, the store owner can define this segment by:
- Entering keywords related to pet adoption, such as “new puppy care” or “pet adoption tips”
- Using URLs of websites related to pet adoption, such as pet adoption agencies or animal shelters
- Entering apps related to pet care, such as pet training apps or apps that provide information on pet health and nutrition.
This will help the pet store owner to target their ads to users who are more likely to have a new pet and be interested in purchasing pet-related products.
Custom intent segments: auto-generated (for Display campaigns)
Custom intent segments (auto-created) for Display campaigns enable you to target a specific vertical or landing page by defining and reaching your ideal audience segment. Currently, auto-created segments are available in English, German, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, French, and Italian. Keep an eye out for updates as new languages will be added over time.
Custom Audiences (previously known as remarketing)
You can target people who have previously interacted with your business, including past visitors to your website, mobile app, videos, or customers who have provided you with their contact information. Your Custom Audiences options include:
- Website visitors and app users.
- Customers who have shared their information with you. This data, both online and offline, can help you reach and re-engage your customers across Search, Shopping, Gmail, Standard Shopping, YouTube, and Display.
- People who share similar interests with your customers. Google Ads analyzes new users against the data and customer segments you provide, and automatically updates similar segments for relevance. To avoid overlap, your original segment is automatically excluded from your similar segment.
Detailed demographics
Detailed demographic segments are a group of people who share common traits beyond just age, gender, and parental status. These segments can include college students, homeowners, or new parents. To find a curated list of detailed demographics, you can download this CSV.
Multiple campaigns targeting the same traffic
When you have multiple campaigns targeting the same traffic, the auction will select the one with the highest effective bid.
For instance, consider Campaign X and Campaign Y both targeting a particular category of smartphones in a user’s location. Campaign X has a $3 base bid, with a 50% bid multiplier for a custom intent segment, and Campaign Y has a $6 base bid with no multiplier. In this case, Campaign Y will win the impression despite having no segment bid adjustment because its effective bid ($6) is higher than Campaign X’s effective bid ($4.5).
Dynamic prospecting
Dynamic prospecting enables advertisers to attract new customers by displaying ads for their highest-performing products using machine learning.
Here’s how it works: Dynamic prospecting leverages historical feed performance and user behavior to predict which feed items prospective buyers are searching for. The system then combines this possible intent with demographics-based information such as age and gender to match the user’s intent with a relevant product from the advertiser’s feed.
The selection process involves evaluating and selecting products based on performance, relevance, and other factors to identify which ones are most likely to result in conversions. By utilizing statistical relationships between feed items and user intent, dynamic prospecting targets new users who are most likely to engage with the advertiser’s products.
For an effective full-funnel setup, it is recommended to use Smart Display campaigns for dynamic prospecting campaigns as they seamlessly combine dynamic remarketing users with prospecting users.
Example
Let’s say you’re a fitness gear provider, and a customer is looking for running shoes. This customer is searching for topics related to running, such as running gear, training plans, and marathon tips.
By using dynamic prospecting, every new piece of relevant information in this user’s journey that indicates their interest in running helps Google’s systems know that showing your running shoes to this customer is more likely to lead to a relevant, assistive-style ad that this user may be more likely to convert from.
Target frequency
Target frequency is an optimization solution that can help you increase your ad views on YouTube and achieve your frequency goals for brand awareness campaigns. By setting a weekly target frequency, you can use positive targeting to show your ads to as many users as possible who match your campaign criteria.
The goal is to build frequency and serve the first ad impressions to these users, who will become eligible for the remaining frequencies over a period of 7 days.
Even if their audience profile changes or they are served impressions outside the specified topics and dynamic lineups, they will still receive the remaining impressions. This strategy can increase brand awareness among your target audience.
How to add audience targeting to an ad group or campaign
By targeting specific audience segments based on their interests, habits, or interaction with your business, you can reach the right customers with your online ads. Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to add audience segments to your ad groups in Google Ads, including how to copy audience segments from one ad group to another. Note that audience targeting may not be available for all types of campaigns, as explained before in this post.
If you want to target specific audiences with your Google Ads, you can easily do so by following these steps:
- Log in to your Google Ads account.
- Select “Audiences” from the left-hand menu.
- Click on “Edit Audience Segments” in the “Audiences” module.
- Choose a campaign and ad group from the list or search for them.
- Select the audience segments you want to target.
- Check the box next to each segment you want to add.
- Save your changes.
Audience search and Audience ideas
Audience search and ideas can be valuable tools to improve the targeting of your ads in Google Ads. With audience search, you can quickly discover audience segments that are relevant to your campaign, while audience ideas can suggest new segments based on your product or brand. These features are available in campaigns that support audience targeting or observation, and can help you reach the right audience for your ads.