What Are Google Custom Audiences?

Google announced last year that they would be combining custom affinity and custom intent audiences into one streamlined solution called Google custom audiences, and it has arrived. Custom audiences is now available for Google Ads for Display, Discovery, Gmail and YouTube campaigns. According to Google, “With custom audiences you can use a single audience for any business goal you’re driving toward, whether that’s awareness, consideration or conversions.”

What Are Google Custom Audiences?

Custom audiences are set up and edited in Google Ads, where advertisers will establish the audiences for their campaign, inclusive of either:

1. People with specific interests or purchase intentions (based on keywords that describe an ideal consumer’s interests or products and services they may be researching to buy)
2. People who searched for specific terms across Google properties (Google.com, YouTube, etc.)

After broadly defining the audience via these two groups, Google custom audience allows for further targeting with additional “inputs” including keywords, URLs and apps that are chosen from dropdown menus. These additional inputs allow advertisers to reach their ideal customer based on interests, habits, activities, app usage and browsing behaviors.

After creating a custom audience, and “based on your campaign goals and keywords, the new custom audiences will interpret all of these signals behind the scenes to tune towards Reach, Consideration or Performance, bringing efficiency to your account management,” explains Google. 

Will Existing Custom Intent Or Custom Affinity Audience Types Within Google Disappear?

No. All prior custom intent and custom affinity audience types are automatically migrated to custom audiences within Google, with no impact on performance or functionality. And, those custom intent or custom affinity audience types with keywords will be moved to the right category according to the new Custom audience template. 

How Can Google Custom Audiences Help Digital Marketers?

The expanded flexibility of Google custom audiences allows digital marketers to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time. “By building audiences based on relevant keywords and websites, you can deliver more relevant ads to better achieve your goals,” explains Google. 

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