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, the “Audiences” tab within the left page navigation menu. 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 similar, 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
Video campaigns run on YouTube and across the web through Google Ads. By targeting your Video campaigns on YouTube and Google video partners, you can advertise to people at moments that matter. With a wide variety of targeting methods available to you, such as demographic groups, interests, placements, and your data segments, you can reach specific or niche audiences based on who they are, what they're interested in, or what content they're viewing.
To provide a comprehensive and consolidated view of your content targeting and make content targeting management and optimization simpler, you’ll see the following improvements in Google Ads:
All types of content targeting can now be found under “Content” in the side navigation:
- "Topics", "Placements", "Display/Video keywords", and "Exclusions" for all types of content targeting are now categorized under the "Content" tab in the side navigation menu. For "Exclusions", click the drop-down arrow
to the right of the term "Exclusions" to select exclusions for topics, placements or Display/Video keywords.
to the right of the term "Exclusions" to select exclusions for topics, placements or Display/Video keywords.Soon, you’ll see further improvements:
- "Topics", "Placements", "Display/Video keywords" will be consolidated into a single "Content" page and report. Exclusions will also be consolidated into a single report in the same page ("Content").
- Your ads will target any of your selected content in your ad group. For example, if you targeted “bikes” as a topic and “cycling” as a Display/Video keyword, your ads will show on content that matches either.
Until your account is migrated, we recommend that you only use one content targeting method (topics, placements, OR Display/Video keywords) per ad group. Before the upcoming changes, combining methods can limit campaign performance.
Available targeting methods for Video campaigns
Audience targeting methods
As announced on November 1, 2022, similar audiences will be transitioned to more durable solutions. Starting May 1, 2023, there will be changes that will affect the way similar segments are used in Google Ads. Learn more about these Changes to audience targeting.
Audience targeting methods let you define who you want to reach. Audiences are groups of people with specific interests, intents, and demographics, as estimated by Google. These include:
- Demographic groups: Choose the age, gender, parental status, or household income of the audience you want to reach.
- Detailed demographics: Reach users based on additional broad, shared traits, such as college students, homeowners, or new parents.
- Interests: Pick from available audience categories to reach people interested in certain topics, even when they may be visiting pages about other topics. Learn more about audiences
- Affinity segments: Raise brand awareness and drive consideration with your video ads by reaching people who already have a strong interest in relevant topics.
- Custom affinity segments: With custom affinity segments, you can create audiences that are more tailored to your brands, compared to broad, TV-like affinity segments. For example, rather than reaching "Sports Fans," a running shoe company may want to reach "Avid Marathon Runners" instead.
- Life events: Reach potential customers on YouTube and Gmail when purchase behavior shifts and brand preferences change during life milestones like moving, graduating from college, or getting married.
- In-market segments: Select from these audiences to find customers who are researching products and actively considering buying a service or product like those you offer.
- Custom segments: Built with performance advertisers in mind, custom segments allow you to reach viewers as they’re making a purchase decision based on the keywords they’ve recently searched on Google.com.
- Your data segments: Reach more viewers across YouTube and Google video partners based on their past interactions with your videos, video ads, or YouTube channel after linking your YouTube channel to your Google Ads account. You can also show ads to people who’ve interacted with your website or mobile app.
- Customer Match: Customer Match lets you use your first-party online and offline data to reach and re-engage with your customers across YouTube and Google video partners. Learn more about Customer Match
- Similar segments: Similar segments is a targeting feature based on first-party data lists (usually your data segments or Customer Match segments) that helps you expand the reach of your best-performing audiences by targeting new users with similar characteristics to your data segments or Customer Match segments.
Content targeting methods
Content targeting methods let you define where you want your ads to show. These include:
- Placements: Target channels, videos, apps, websites, or placements within websites. For example, you can target an entire high-traffic blog or just the homepage of a popular news site. Placements can include:
- YouTube channels
- YouTube videos
- Websites on the Google Display Network
- Apps on the Google Display Network
Note: When you add Google Display Network placements, your ad may still run in all eligible locations on YouTube. When you add YouTube placements, your ad may still run in all eligible locations across the Google Display Network.
If you have "Video partners on the Display Network" selected under "Networks" and you add Google Display Network placements only, your ads may still show on YouTube.
- Topics: Target your video ads to specific topics on YouTube and the Google Display Network. Topic targeting lets you reach a broad range of videos, channels, and websites related to the topics you select. For example, if you target the "Automotive" topic, then your ad will show on YouTube to people watching videos about cars.
- Keywords: Depending on your video ad format, you can show your video ads based on words or phrases (keywords) related to a YouTube video, YouTube channel, or type of website that your audience is interested in.
- Devices: Target users using computers, smart phones, mobile devices, and TV screen devices like Chromecast.