Audience insights

Audience insights help you better understand who your customers are by surfacing the unique characteristics, interests, and behaviors of user groups who view your ads and convert.

If you’ve been using Google AI features like optimized targeting and automated bidding, audience insights highlight the top Google audience segments which have been targeted and are performing well. Read more about the different audience segments that make up your conversions, what percentage they make up, and how represented they are compared to your targeted population.

Note: Audience insights are currently available for the following campaign types:
  • Asset audience insights: Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Video, App
  • Persona audience insights: Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Video Action campaigns (VAC), Display, App

On this page

Why use audience insights

Start using audience insights to:

  • Know your customers and understand how Google AI is helping you: Learn about the unique characteristics of user groups that view your ads, in particular those that Google AI identifies as driving strong performance. Use these insights to help further refine your audience.
  • Improve your creatives: Find out which assets and messaging people are engaging with the most so you can adjust your creatives.
  • Get better results: By understanding your target market and the creatives they respond most to more thoroughly, you can make changes to optimize your targeting, creatives, and overall campaign performance.

How to use audience insights

1. View audience insight summaries

Go to the “Insights” page and scroll to the “Audience insight” cards. Here, you’re given a quick overview about the audiences that are converting on your campaign the most, which audience has the highest index, and what percentage they represent.

An animated GIF scrolling through the Insights page within Google Ads

2. Get in-depth information about your top audience

Below the audience insight cards, you’ll find an expandable table with persona audience insights. This table dives deeper into your top audiences and gives you more specific information about the different segments that convert on your campaigns.

A screenshot demonstrating the persona insights UI within Google Ads.

Hover over the different data points in the table for contextual guidance and more helpful information. You can then better understand the audiences converting on your campaigns and who is likely to convert so you can find opportunities to make your targeting even better.

Columns for persona audience insights

  • Audience segment: The name of the audience segment represented.
  • Type: The Google Audience segment they are from, such as in-market, affinity, detailed demographic, and life events.
  • Share of conversions: The percentage of conversions coming from the audience segment in the campaign.
  • Index: Shows how represented an audience segment is in your conversions compared to the rest of your targeted population. A higher index means that a given audience segment is more unique for you.

Account-level audience segment details

At the account level, you can view more details about your audience segments in the slider panel on the right.

  • Customer list: An overview of your audience segment that shows the list name, type, and metadata (same as Audience Manager).
  • Performance across your campaigns: Campaign-level data table that shows campaigns which also have the same segment as insights, campaign status, type, bid strategy, top signal, and share of metric.

3. Find out which audience segments your assets are resonating with

If you’re running an asset-based campaign (Performance Max, Demand Gen, Search, Video), you’ll sometimes find Asset audience insights, which show you which audience segments your assets are resonating with most. Use these insights to generate more assets that resonate similarly well with your potential users.

A simplified UI screenshot that shows available asset audience insights within the Google Ads UI.

When these insights are available for a given asset, you’ll find the following details:

  • Audience segments: Which groups of users the asset resonates most with, including details on how each segment is defined
  • Affinity indexes: Interest in the asset for the given audience segment relative to all users.
  • Call to action: Guidance to add new assets that resonate with your audience. Clicking here takes you to your asset library.

4. Apply recommendations

Apply relevant surfaced recommendations to get more benefits.

A screenshot demonstrating the recommendations UI within Google Ads.

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