Google Ads Audiences: Targeting, Observation, & Audience Signals

Audiences in Google Ads

In the fast-paced world of online marketing, businesses often find themselves caught up in the whirlwind of creating the perfect ad – catchy headlines, compelling calls to action, and persuasive descriptions. Those are all fine, but there's a fundamental aspect that often gets overlooked: targeting the right audience.

In this article, we'll unravel the mystery of audience settings in Google Ads, discussing terms like 'targeting', 'observation', and 'audience signals'.

1. Targeting Your Audience: Precision

'Targeting' is about selecting a specific audience segment, ensuring your ads reach exactly the people you intend to target. Imagine setting up a display campaign to showcase your ads across the internet. With targeting, you can handpick the audience, tailoring your ads to suit their preferences and needs. This feature is incredibly powerful for focused campaigns, ensuring your message resonates with the right crowd. Tip: Set audience expansion to OFF because this setting could enable your ads to show beyond your intended audience.

2. Observation Targeting: A Strategic Insight

Observation targeting, on the other hand, is about insight without confinement. It allows you to monitor how your ads perform for various audience segments or placements without limiting your campaign’s reach. Picture this: you launch a search campaign, and your ads appear when people search for phrases related to your keywords. Observation targeting enables you to gather data on different audience segments. What’s cool about it is it doesn’t impact your campaign’s performance. You can tweak your bids based on the insights gained, optimizing your campaign for better results (you could add bid modifiers to the different audiences).

3. Audience Signals: Guiding Google's Algorithm

Lastly, Audience Signals are your way of guiding Google’s powerful algorithm in Performance Max campaigns. Unlike targeting and observation, this feature acts as a suggestion to Google, indicating the types of people you want to reach. Suppose you sell dog food and want to target dog lovers. By selecting this audience as an 'audience signal', Google gets a starting point to find your potential customers. IMPORTANT: it's not limited to dog lovers; Google can expand the reach based on your suggestion, perhaps targeting homeowners who are also dog enthusiasts.

In Summary

Audience targeting isn't perfect in Google Ads, but if you understand and use it properly, it can help you get better results in your Google Ads account.