Google search- Audience Targeting [New Update and announcement]

Google has announced Q4 last year (Oct mid 2019 to be precise)that Advertisers can now use Audience Targeting in Search Campaigns also. This is nothing different from a Display campaign (if I have to make it easy to understand). Here, you have various Targeting options like- Affinity, Custom Affinity, In market, Remarketing , Demographics etc. Good thing is, you can also use this for App Marketing if you are creating it under Search campaign

Why you should consider ?


I find this really useful, now you can combine the Intent with the additional audience layer who have previously shown interest in your product and service.

Below is an example from Google

For instance, let’s say you sell camping gear. To reach avid campers, you can pair an affinity audience like “Outdoor Enthusiast” with generic camping keywords. By adding this additional audience layer, you can reach people who are not only searching for camping products, but are also passionate about the great outdoors.

See the screenshot below and then I will explain it in depth

Here you can 3 options similar to Display Audience Targeting.

Lets see the 1st Option- Search


Here you can see auto populated - (i) Recently seleted audiences and (ii)Easily accessible inMarket and Affinity audiences based on your URL  

Then we click on Ideas - here you can see that based on your Business or Products/Services-certain ideas are auto populated- Feel free to use them or else you can create or mix audiences as needed

Then we will have a look at the Browse Tab- Based on your Goal, Strategy, Funnel level, and path to purchase you can select the audiences

My recommendations


Audiences targeting is an amazing way to reach the Audiences who have intent and also have shown previous Affinity or are in Market. However, I recommend not to combine your best performing campaigns immediately or in other words do not layer it on the existing campaign. I would recommend you to pick a campaign which is not performing well. For instance- Pick up a campaign with very high clicks but absolutely no conversion. If it is a Top funnel campaign, combine it with the Affinity audience and if it is a mid to Lower funnel campaign- combine it with in-Market audiences. Once you have started seeing the results, then slowly move to other campaigns.


Thanks for reading!
Sarang