Optimized targeting uses real-time campaign data to help you find new and relevant people who are more likely to convert within your campaign goals. You can use optimized targeting to expand to audiences who you may otherwise miss with only manual targeting.

With optimized targeting, you can:

• Expand to new audiences beyond your existing segments: You can optimize how your campaign finds relevant people based on conversion data to drive awareness, consideration, or conversions.
• Improve toward custom performance goals: Using custom bidding with optimized targeting helps you anchor your campaign goals to the same key performance indicators (KPIs) as the automated bidding system. This helps customize how you improve your return on investment (ROI).
• Optimize campaign performance with or without third-party cookies: You can use optimized targeting with all audience targeting. This gives your campaign flexibility and durability when optimizing toward your campaign KPIs.

Optimized targeting is available for display, video, audio, and YouTube video action campaigns. You can turn off optimized targeting to restrict targeting to existing first-party audiences.

Topics in this article

• How optimized targeting works
• Use optimized targeting in Display & Video 360
• Review campaign performance
• Considerations
• Limitations
• Frequently asked questions

How optimized targeting works

Optimized targeting models help find new audiences who are more likely to convert using audience signals and real-time click and conversion data from your campaign. Audience signals are your manually selected audiences, which include the type of audiences who are more likely to convert. Audience signals help create a starting point for optimized targeting.

There are two types of audience signals:

• Respected inputs: You can provide hard constraints that limit who the ads serve to. These mandatory targeting signals make sure the right people see your ads while making sure your ads aren't associated with inappropriate content.
• Soft signal inputs: You can provide soft targeting signals that inform and guide optimized targeting, but don't limit who the ads serve to. Optimized targeting may serve outside these targeting signals as it finds better performing traffic.

Examples

How you use optimized targeting depends on your campaign goals. Here are a few examples:

Brand safety and audience exclusions

Optimized targeting respects audience exclusions and doesn’t require changes to your brand safety settings. Learn more about Brand safety targeting.

Use optimized targeting in Display & Video 360

Optimized targeting is available for the following campaign type:

• Display, video, and audio campaigns
• YouTube video action campaigns
• Demand Gen line items

Display, video, and audio

Optimized targeting is automatically turned on for new display, video, and audio line items using automated bid strategies when targeting the following audiences:

• Affinity audiences
• In-market audiences
• Custom audiences

If your line items don’t automatically have optimized targeting turned on, you can update your bidding strategy and audience targeting to use optimized targeting:

1. Go to Campaigns and select your campaign.
2. Click the Line items tab and select a line item.
3. Under the "Line item details" tab, go to the "Bid strategy" card.
4. Select Automated bidding as your bid strategy.
5. In the "Audience lists" card, click the pencil icon to edit.
   • Under the "Include" section, you can choose to target one of the following audiences to provide hints for optimized targeting:
     • First- and third-party audiences
     • Google audiences
     • Combined audiences
     • Custom lists
   • (Optional) Under the "Exclude" section, you can choose which audiences you don’t want to target.
     • First- and third-party audiences
     • Google audiences
   • Note: You can’t exclude the first-party audience list you’ve already targeted.
6. Click Apply when done.
7. In the "Optimized targeting" card, tick the "Use optimized targeting" checkbox.
8. Click Save when done.

YouTube & partners video action and Demand Gen line items

Optimized targeting is automatically turned on for YouTube video action and Demand Gen line items when you create YouTube line items that target the following audiences:

• First-party audiences
• Google affinity audiences
• In-market audiences
• Custom audiences

If your line items don’t have optimized targeting automatically on for your YouTube line items, you can update your bidding strategy and audience targeting to use optimized targeting:

1. Go to Campaigns and select your campaign.
2. Click the Line items tab and select a line item.
3. Under the "Line item details" tab, go to the "Bid strategy" card.
4. Navigate to the appropriate Ad group and click the pencil icon to edit.
5. In the Ad group targeting section "Audience lists" card, click the pencil icon to edit.
   • Under the "Include" section, you can choose to target one of the following audiences to provide hints for optimized targeting:
     • First- and third-party audiences
     • Google audiences
     • Combined audiences
     • Custom lists
     • Lookalike audiences
   • (Optional) Under the "Exclude" section, you can choose which audiences you don’t want to target.
     • First- and third-party audiences
     • Google audiences
6. Click Apply when done.
7. In the "Optimized targeting" card, tick the "Use optimized targeting" checkbox.
8. Click Done to close the Ad group details.
9. Click Save when done.

You can add the following targeting signals to optimize targeting for your YouTube video action campaigns: audience segments, custom segments, and customer data segments.

Bulk enable optimized targeting for multiple line items

You can turn on optimized targeting for a bulk set of line items setting the optimized targeting field to TRUE.

To learn more about available line item fields in the version 6 structured data file (SDF), go to the Display & Video 360 API guide.

Turn off optimized targeting

You can turn off optimized targeting if you want to restrict targeting to manually targeted audiences.

To turn off optimized targeting for your display, video, or audio line items:

1. Go to Campaigns and select your campaign.
2. Click the Line items tab and select a line item.
3. Under the "Line item details" tab, go to the "Optimized targeting" card.
4. Untick the "Use optimized targeting" checkbox.
5. Click Save when done.

To turn off optimized targeting for your YouTube video action campaigns:

1. Go to Campaigns and select your campaign.
2. Click the Line items tab and select a line item.
3. Go to the "Line item details" tab,
4. Navigate to the appropriate Ad group and click the pencil icon to edit.
5. In the "Optimized targeting" card, tick the "Use optimized targeting" checkbox.
6. Click Done to close the Ad group details.
7. Click Save when done.

Reviewing campaign performance

You can generate an Instant reporting using the optimized targeting dimension to measure which impressions come from optimized targeting and which come from your selected segments:

• Yes: Impressions that come from optimized targeting.
• No: Impressions that come from your selected segments.

The following dimensions are compatible with the optimized targeting dimension:

• Advertiser
• Insertion order
• Line item
• Date

Learn more about Dimensions in reports.

The audience insights analysis tool is available to quickly assess the audience demographics, interests, and behavioral characteristics of the audiences you reach with optimized targeting.

Considerations

When using optimized targeting:

• There are no minimum audience list size requirements.
• Your ads may serve to users beyond your chosen targeting signals.
• Your ads won't serve to audiences that you exclude on your customer data segments.

Limitations

• Optimized targeting isn't available for connected TV (CTV) line items. To learn more about widening your reach for connected TV (CTV) line items, go to Audience expansion for connected TV line items.
• It's not recommended that you target a first-party audience list positively and negatively at the same time.
  • Targeting an audience list positively and negatively at the same time cancels out both actions.
  • Optimized targeting uses your manually targeted audience segments as starting points to find new audiences.
• Optimized targeting isn't an option for "Maximize viewable impressions", "Maximize viewable for at least 10 seconds", and "Maximize completed in-view and audible" bid strategies. Optimized targeting has been automatically removed from affected line items.
• Optimized targeting only works with clicks, conversions, and custom bidding.

Frequently asked questions