Add audience signals - Google Ads Help (original) (raw)

Audience signals allow you to share demographics, interests, and behaviors of your customers to help Google AI find the most relevant audience.

For Performance Max campaigns, these signals guide Google’s AI to find your ideal customers. For Demand Gen campaigns, you can use audience signals to build “Lookalike Segments” based on your first-party data.

Keep in mind the following information:

Audience signals are typically applied at the asset group level in Performance Max campaigns.
It can take up to 2 weeks for Google’s machine learning models to fully integrate and optimize new audience signals.
For new or updated audience lists (including Lookalike Segments), it may take 24-72 hours for the audience size to populate and update accurately in Google Ads. If a “Lookalike Segment” isn't populating, ensure its associated campaign is active and allow for this processing time.

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Steps to add audience signals
Optimize campaigns with audience signal inputs

Steps to add audience signals

Go to Audiences within the Campaigns menu .
Locate your asset group and go to the "Audiences" section beneath your asset group.
1. Note: To find and edit audience signals in Performance Max, navigate to the asset group “Summary” view and select the pencil icon next to the signal you wish to update.
Create a unique name for your audience.
Add your data sources, such as customer lists, website visitor lists, or custom segments.
Add custom segments based on interests, keywords, URLs, or apps.
Select Save Audience.

Tip: You can use the “Additional segments” option to further customize your audience. To enhance machine learning, use search term based custom segments.

Optimize campaigns with audience signal inputs

Below are audience signal inputs that you can use with your campaigns to customize your ads to the right audience and maximize reach.

Your customers' interactions with your business

You can use first-party customer and marketing data you already have from desktop and mobile visitors, page and social views, and past converters.

Try adding data from the sources below:

Website visitor lists
App user lists
Customer lists (for example, email and subscription lists)
Video viewer lists
Firebase lists

Learn more About your data segments.

Note: To avoid issues in using audience signals, ensure your lists follow the requirements below:

Lists should match the campaign operating system type. For instance, an iOS campaign requires a list of iOS device IDs.
Ensure your lists are refreshed every 540 days to maintain optimal performance.
Lists must have more than 1000 active and eligible users.

Your custom audience segments

Custom audience segments help you reach your ideal audience by using relevant keywords, URLs, or apps that you add. Add the keywords or phrases that represent your targeted audience. Use URLs from websites that are similar to your website. Enter the names of apps that your ideal customer is likely to use.

Learn more About custom segments.

Demographics

When you use Demographics, you can narrow the focus of your custom audience segment by using certain identifiers to focus your campaign on specific qualities of your audience.

Although Demographics can be used to refine your audience in Performance Max campaigns, App campaigns for installs won’t use those exclusions. This means that even if you specify certain demographics to exclude, your ads may still reach people outside those parameters.

Additional audience segments

Add other segments to reach people based on who they are, their interests and habits, and what they’re actively researching. These signals help you reach the right audience at the right time.

Try adding targets from these areas:

Detailed demographics: Reach user groups based on long-term life facts.
Life events: Reach user groups when they're in the midst of important life milestones.
Affinity: Reach user groups based on what they're passionate about and their habits and interests.
In-market: Reach user groups based on their recent purchase intent.

Learn how to Create audience segments of your app users.

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