Google Ads Audience and Demographics Targeting Knowhow

Audiences are a group of users you can choose to target based on interests, intents and demographics.

Google is expanding its ways to reach audiences on both search and display networks by providing more meaningful segments/categories. These segments look very similar to what we have on Facebook with more recent additions like demographics, detailed demographics, customer match, etc.

Below are the audience types available on both search and display networks in Google:

Search

1. Remarketing/Retargeting: This is a group of users who’ve already visited or taken some action on your website. The users are tracked using a Google remarketing code/analytics code (otherwise known as a tag or pixel), which places a cookie on the browsers of people visiting your website. The remarketing lists can be created in Google Ads directly or imported from Google Analytics.
2. Similar audiences: This is a group of users who have similar behavior to your existing audience list. The similar audience list is automatically created and updated by Google when you have at least one eligible list under “Audiences.”
3. Customer Match: This is a group of users we can target based on data shared by them. Customer match allows us to reach users who are logged in with their email address in Google, YouTube or Gmail.
4. In-market: This is a group of users who’re actively researching, browsing or comparing (basically, showing intent) in the type of products you sell or the services you are into. Here are the top–level in-market segments that are available for targeting:

Below is the path to find these audiences in Search:

Search campaigns > “Audiences” > “Select Campaign/Ad Group” > “Audience Type”

Display

1. Remarketing/Retargeting: This is a group of users who’ve already visited or taken some action on your website. The users are tracked using a Google remarketing code/analytics code (otherwise known as a tag or pixel), which places a cookie on the browsers of people visiting your website. The remarketing lists can be created in Google Ads directly or imported from Google Analytics.
2. Similar audiences: This is a group of users who have similar behavior to your existing audience list. The similar audience list is automatically created and updated by Google when you have at least one eligible list under “Audiences.”
3. Affinity and Custom Affinity: These are groups of users we can target based on their interests and habits. Affinity audiences are pre-defined interest lists created by Google whereas Custom Affinity allows you to create your own Affinity audiences based on specific interests, URLs, places or apps.
4. In-market and custom intent: This is a group of users who’re actively researching, browsing or comparing (basically, showing intent) in the type of products you sell or the services you are into. Custom intent targeting allows you to customize your audiences based on the products and services relevant to you. Here are the top-level affinity interests’ segments that are available for targeting:

Custom intent targeting is available in two options:

1. Segments that are automatically created by Google based on your existing Google Ads campaigns and account settings.
2. Custom audiences created by inputting keywords/URLs that closely match your products/services.

Below is the path to find these audiences in Display.

Display campaigns > “Audiences” > “Select Campaign/Ad Group” > “Audience Type”

Demographics targeting

The demographics targeting feature in Google Ads allows you to target users based on their age group, gender, parental status and household income.

Demographics targeting options available in Google Ads are as follows: