Audiences: Targeting

The first thing that you can do with an audience is do a search.

You're gonna get a couple of different options which you can choose from.

Before you select an audience, make sure to check the details to know more about those groups of people. Just hover your mouse over it and you're gonna get an explanation.

Select the ones that are appropriate for your business by ticking the small box.

Audiences that you’ve chosen are gonna be displayed at the right-hand side:

You can also browse by clicking the “Browse” tab.

Explore each of the options for a more specific targeting.

‘How they’ve interacted with your business’ and ‘Combined audiences’ are the two that you’re gonna be using the most. The first one is used for remarketing while the second one allows you to combine audiences.

 

Creating a Combined Audience

Click “Browse” and select “Combined Audience”.

Then, click “New combined audience”.

 

Enter the Audience name. It should relate to whatever specific targeting you’re doing.

Add in your audience. Search for a specific audience and tick the check box to add it.

You can also use the “Browse” tab.

The “Narrow your audience (AND)” option is used if you want to add another specific audience. People who match both criteria will be targeted. You can use this multiple times if you want to target a narrower audience

If you want to exclude audiences, you can click on “Exclude audiences (NOT)” and start adding in people you don’t want to show your ads to.

Don’t forget to save once you’re done.

As soon as you start targeting some audience, Google will give you ideas based on what you selected. Click “Ideas'' to view it.

If you have a website connected or you have uploaded your own audiences, Google will also give you a bunch of ideas based on that.

Lastly, you’ll need to choose between the two options for “audiences targeting setting”.

  • Targeting: Using this option means you’re gonna narrow down your audience a lot based on Google’s data. This is not recommended especially when you’re doing search ads. With search ads, you are using the user’s intent.
  • Observation (Recommended): This does not narrow down the reach of your campaigns but still allows you to select custom bids which means you’re still gonna have your keywords, you’re still gonna be shown to the audiences that you’re shown and you’ll also see whenever they are triggered by a condition that you set up previously. This option will give you more data. It's still gonna target that way that you set it up but it’s not gonna narrow it down based on the options that you choose when setting up your audience. However, when one of those is triggered along with the audience that is already being triggered based on your targeting, you will get data on that.

💡You don’t need to use audiences to make effective ads especially not in the beginning.💡