About your data segment compatibility

To provide a comprehensive and consolidated view of your Audiences and make audience management and optimization simpler, you’ll find the following improvements in Google Ads:

  • New audience reporting
    Detailed reporting about audience demographics, segments, and exclusions is now consolidated in one place. Click the Campaigns icon Campaigns Icon and open the “Audiences, keywords and content” tab and click Audiences. You can also easily manage your Audiences from this report page. Learn more About Audience reporting.
  • New terms
    We’re using new terms on your audience report and throughout Google Ads. For example, “audience types” (these include custom, in-market, and affinity) are now referred to as audience segments and “remarketing” is now referred to as “your data”. Learn more about the Updates to Audience terms and phrases.

Your data segments let you show ads to people who have interacted with your business and thus target customers who may be highly interested in your products and services. These customers may have visited your website, downloaded your app, or viewed your YouTube videos. In Google Ads, you can create your data segments based on lots of different data sources and behaviors of potential customers.

Learn more about the different ways to use your data with Google Ads.

Ad reach with your data segments is highly dependent on where you would like to show your ads. This article explains why that may happen, and which of your data segments are compatible.

Before you begin

If you aren't familiar with how to use your data, Learn how to set up your data segments. You'll learn how to set up a campaign targeting people who visited your website or used your app and understand how segments are created.

In some cases, your segment may be ineligible or incompatible with your campaign. There are 2 reasons why your data segment may not work in your campaign:

  • Your data segment does not have enough visitors or users on the selected network in your campaign settings. Learn more about list sizes.
  • Your data segment type is incompatible with the selected network in your campaign settings. Below you can learn more about list type compatibility.

List type compatibility

Your data segments are grouped by the source of their data into data segment types. The most common type of list is "Website visitors", which uses a tag on your website to add people to the list. Below you can find out which list type is compatible with which types of ads.

Keep in mind that you still have to meet the size requirements.

Size of your data segment

The requirement to serve your ads varies based on the target network. The accuracy of the estimated segment size will vary depending on your segment settings, the length of time since your tag was installed, your campaign settings, and other factors.

  • Google Display Network must have a minimum of 100 active visitors or users within the last 30 days.
  • Google Search Network must have a minimum of 1,000 active visitors or users within the last 30 days, unless it is a customer list. Customer lists must have a minimum of 100 active visitors or users within the last 30 days.
  • YouTube must have a minimum of 1,000 active visitors or users within the last 30 days, unless it is a customer list. Customer lists must have a minimum of 100 active visitors or users within the last 30 days.

"Active users" (or just "Users") is the number of people who engaged with your site or app.

If you have trouble with managing your data segments:

List type

List compatibility

  Search YouTube Display Gmail Demand Gen
Website visitors* Done Done Done Done Done
YouTube users Done Done Done Done Done
App users Done Done Done Remove Remove
Customer list Done Done Done Done Done

* Some visitors to your website may not be able to be targeted on Google properties. For example, visitors uploaded through Data Management Platforms can't be targeted on Google properties.

If you have a good history of policy compliance, but don't meet the Customer Match policy requirements, you can only use customer lists in the “Observation” setting and for Exclusions.

Related links

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?
Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu