May 22, 2020
For a number of years, advertisers have been able to make use of Google’s various audience targeting capabilities across their Search, Display and YouTube ad campaigns.
Today, two of Google’s key audience types – affinity audiences and detailed demographics – are now also available for use in Shopping campaigns, at campaign and ad group level. Once applied to campaigns, these audience segments are also for target return on ad spend (ROAS) smartbidding, if added at campaign level.
By applying these audiences to campaigns, advertisers can get a good gauge of how well these audience segments perform in their accounts. They can gather insights about their own customer base, and focus on targeting their most valuable audiences through bid modifiers.
Affinity audiences: These allow advertisers to reach users to whom their offering will matter most. With affinity audiences, you can reach audiences based on a detailed picture of their lifestyles and passions. Examples of affinity audiences that advertisers can target include:
Detailed demographics: These allow advertisers to reach broad segments of the population that share common traits, such as college students, homeowners, or new parents.
With over 100 targetable affinity audiences available, advertisers have plenty of choice when it comes to which segments to target. In theory, you could target every one of these in your Search or Shopping campaigns. However, this becomes unwieldy with lots of data spread too thinly, and it’s tricky to gather actionable insights from your audiences.
You should stick to a smaller number of core audiences, based on the products and services on offer and what you as an advertiser know about your own target audiences. For example, a sports retailer might choose to target fans of different sports.
A great place to get insights about which audiences already perform well in your account is the audience insights tab within Google Ads. This shows you the demographic breakdown of your audiences. It also highlights some of your most relevant in-market and affinity audiences based on how well they index against users who convert through ads. It’s always good to check in to this tab from time to time; some of the audiences insights might be quite surprising!
Make sure you don’t just set and forget your Google affinity and detailed demographics. Once your audience observations are applied to Shopping campaigns, give yourself enough time to gather a good amount of data (30-60 days should work). Then, check in on how they’re performing.
At this point, you should be in a good position to make tactical bidding decisions; increased bid modifiers on high converting segments, or lower modifiers on poor performers. Keep up to date on audience insights too, to find any possible gaps in your audience coverage.
Looking to hit the ground running with affinity audiences and detailed demographics in your Google Shopping campaigns? Get in touch to learn how partnering with AGY47 can help you steam ahead of your competition and deliver strong, measurable results.