Starting on May 1, 2023, similar audiences (or segments) will be gradually phased out as a targeting feature. Learn more about this latest change to audience targeting
With audience expansion, you can reach more people similar to your existing audience segment. For campaigns with audience expansion, you may see an increase in impressions, views, clicks, and conversions.
Audience expansion is available to Video campaigns that use the "Product and brand consideration" or "Brand awareness and reach" goal. In this article, you’ll learn how to enable audience expansion in your campaign.
Instructions
Enable audience expansion for new campaigns
- In Google Ads, begin creating your campaign.
- Choose Product and brand consideration or Brand awareness and reach as your goal and continue.
- In the "Audiences" section of campaign creation, add audience targeting. After you select your audience targeting, you’ll see the "Audience expansion" checkbox.
- Click the checkbox to enable audience expansion.
Enable audience expansion for existing campaigns
- In Google Ads, find your campaign and click on it.
- Click the ad group that you’d like to adjust targeting for.
- Click Audiences in the navigation menu.
- Click the
pencil iconand select Edit ad group targeting.
- Scroll to the "Audience expansion" box.
- Click the checkbox to enable audience expansion.
Estimates for weekly impressions
When creating a campaign, Google Ads estimates the available impressions your campaign is expected to receive on the right side of the page. When you enable audience expansion, you’ll see an increase in the number of estimated impressions.
Effects of audience expansion on your campaigns
Audience expansion finds more users who look like your selected audience to increase your campaign's reach while maintaining your CPM and CPV bids. Additional reach depends on the available budget and the size of your audience.
Audience expansion reporting
In Google Ads, you can find audience expansion reporting by navigating to the "Audiences" page for an ad group. On the "Audiences" page, scroll to the bottom of the performance table until you see a row labeled "Total: Expansion and optimized targeting". Audience expansion performance should be compared as a contribution to achieving overall goals of a given campaign.