About audience targeting using AND/OR for multiple criteria

In Google Ads you have many criteria to define who we should show your ad to. Understanding how these different criteria behave in combination can help you refine the reach of your campaign.

This article explains how criteria are ANDed and ORed when you choose them in Google Ads. For more freedom in explicitly defining AND/OR relationships between your audience criteria, see Combined Audiences.

With AND, you can reach an audience that fulfills each of the multiple criteria at the same time.

With OR, you can reach an audience that fulfills any of a set of criteria.

Example for OR

Let’s say you’re selling makeup and want to reach audiences with specific related interests. The audience segments “Beauty Mavens” and “Fashionistas” who are interested in beauty and fashion could be interested in your products. You don’t have a preference for either one.

ORing will show you an audience that matches at least one of the interests.

If you want to reach any of those two audiences, you should add both to your adgroup. Without any further action, these audiences will automatically be treated as an OR. As a result, you may reach “Beauty Mavens” who are not into fashion and “Fashionistas” who are not into beauty and also people who are interested in both.

Examples for AND

Let’s say you’re a car retailer who wants to reach car enthusiasts by gender and age.

If you want to reach women in ages 18-24 who are interested in cars, you can just add “women,” and “18-24,” in demographics, and “Car Enthusiasts” in audiences. We will AND these demographic and audience criteria by default and will only show your ad to people who fulfill all of these criteria.

ANDing will show your ad to the audience that matches both criteria: demographic and interest.

If you now want to reach people who are “in-market for an SUV” and are also “outdoor lovers” you would need to AND those audience criteria. By default we OR audience criteria, but you can use Combined Audiences to achieve ANDing.

You can use AND and OR across multiple criterias such as demographics, affinities, in-market, and remarketing. The table below shows you the default AND/OR behavior between those different criteria types.

Behavior when combining multiple targeting criteria
YOU CAN APPLY THE ABOVE EXAMPLES WITH MORE CATEGORIES
ANDing audience segments finds people who match each of the segments you are AND’ing together. For example, if you choose an audience by a specific demographic like women in the age group of 18-24 AND add the interest criteria “Beauty Mavens” you will find only those segments of women in 18-24 ages who are also interested in “Beauty Mavens.”
ORing audience segments finds people who match at least one of the segments you are OR’ing together. For example, if you choose an audience by specific interest category like “Sports Fans,” “Movie Lovers,” and “Car Enthusiasts,” you get those who at a minimum are at least part of one of those audience segments. They may be in more than one of your selected audience segments.
YOU CAN APPLY THE ABOVE EXAMPLES WITH MORE CATEGORIES
	Detailed demographics	OR	Affinities, Consumer Patterns, Life Events	OR	In-markets	OR	Remarketing
Taxonomic			Shutter bugs		Cameras		All visitors, all converters
	Marital Status		Movie lovers		Digital SLRs		Customer Match
	Education		Running enthusiasts		Plasma TVs		Similar Audience
	Home ownership Status
Custom	NA		Custom Affinities, for example:		Custom Intent, for example:		Rule based lists
			Swiss winter sport fans (outdoor, winter, Switzerland)		About to buy a camera (camera, slr, purchase)		Web, App, YouTube, Custom combination
AND
Keywords	Search
	Audience (display keywords about the people who view the ad)
	Content (display keywords about where the ads show)
OR
Topics (category subjects of the pages where the ads show)
OR
Placements (specific websites where to show the ads)
AND
Demo	Gender: Female OR Male OR Unknown
	AND
	Age: 18 - 24 OR 25 - 34 OR 35 - 44 OR 45 - 54 OR 55 - 64 OR 65+ OR Unknown
AND
Household Income	Top 10% OR 11 - 20% OR 21 - 30% OR 31 - 40% OR 41 - 50% OR Lower 50% OR Unknown
AND
Parental status	Parent OR Not parent OR Unknown

Related links

• Evaluate ad performance on the Display Network
• Create a custom combination list