About audience segments

You can add audience segments to ad groups and reach people based on who they are, their interests and habits, what they’re actively researching or how they've interacted with your business. Audience segments can boost your campaign's performance by reaching people browsing websites, using apps or watching videos. Refer to the personalised advertising policy, formerly known as interest-based advertising, to help improve the experience for users and advertisers alike.

How audience segments work

For Display, Search, Video, Hotel and Standard Shopping campaigns, audiences are made up of segments or groups of people with specific interests, intents and demographic information, as estimated by Google. When adding an audience to a campaign or ad group, you can select from a wide range of segments. For example, these segments could include fans of sport and travel, people shopping for cars or specific people that have visited your website or app. Google Ads will show ads to people who are likely in the selected categories.

Audiences are determined by people’s activity using Google products and third-party websites or estimated based on content certain groups of people are likely to be interested in. Activity and content on third-party websites are primarily used for audience segments on third-party websites, and activity and content on Google products are primarily used for audience segments on those products.

Refer to the below for a brief description of the different audience segment types to use for accuracy in your campaigns:

• Affinity segments: Reach users based on what they're passionate about and their habits and interests.
• Custom segments: Custom segments help you reach your ideal audience by entering relevant keywords, URLS and apps.
• Detailed demographics: Reach users based on long-term life facts.
• Life events: Reach users when they're in the midst of important life milestones.
• In-market: Reach users based on their recent purchase intent.
• Your data segments: Reach users that have interacted with your business.
  • Website and app visitors: Reach people who have visited either your website or your apps.
  • Customer Match: Reach your existing customers based on your CRM data.
  • Lookalike segments: Reach groups of people that share characteristics with others on an existing 'seed' list. Lookalike segments are only available in Demand Gen campaigns. 
• Google-engaged audiences: Reach users who have previously interacted with your website on Google Search, YouTube or other Google sites.

The table below summarises which audience segment type is available for each campaign type:

Different audience segment options

After you’ve identified the interests, needs, behaviours and goals of your audience, you can define who your audience will be for a particular campaign or ad group. You can select segments that are preconfigured by Google Ads.