Many advertisers support targeted audience segmentation. Why? Because it is targeted, cost-effective, and helps tailor your messaging strategy. Optimized targeting is still audience segmentation, but it now allows you to reach people outside your target demographic.
Table of contents
- What is Optimized Targeting?
- How does it work?
- When should you use Google Ads audience targeting?
- How to use Optimised Targeting to reach more people?
What is Optimized Targeting?
Advertisers can reach potential customers beyond their target demographic. Google listed the following advantages of audience segmentation:
- Simplifies Google Ads audience targeting.
- Helps advertisers reach multiple networks and audiences.
- Allows you to reach more people with your campaign.
In order to help increase conversions and meet campaign goals, optimized targeting automatically looks for signals such as keywords on your media assets or landing pages. You can also manually add signals like demographics or content keywords.
How does it work?
Metrics for performance are shown below Totals on your Display, Discovery, and video campaigns. With optimized targeting, you get clicks, impressions, and conversions from people outside your target demographic.
The algorithm looks for more conversion chances by targeting people who are most likely to become customers based on your setup’s signals. Using real-time conversion data, the feature learns what recent converts are looking for.
Optimized targeting takes time to learn and adjust to new audiences that are most likely to convert. Google suggests:
- For new campaigns, wait until they reach 50 conversions or have been active for two weeks before evaluating results.
- Wait at least two weeks before evaluating existing campaigns.
Because optimized targeting uses targeting signals to find similar criteria, it can reduce or stop serving traffic on your signals if it finds better performing traffic. It also respects your existing brand safety settings, so you don’t have to change anything when using this feature.
When should you use Google Ads audience targeting?
If your current audience targeting methods are yielding mixed results, optimized targeting may be the answer. Here are some situations where keeping this feature on may benefit your campaign.
- Targeting expansion didn’t help your campaign.
- Your current targeting strategy is slow and has failed to grow your audience.
- You want to increase conversion rates without increasing bids or budget.
- You want to gain new customers or reach new target audiences.
How to use Optimised Targeting to reach more people?
Using optimized targeting depends on your campaign’s goals.
If you want more traffic to your website through Google Ads, you should use optimized targeting, Maximize conversions as your bidding strategy, and website visits as your conversion type.
Optimised targeting can be combined with Maximize conversions or Target CPA as a bidding strategy to increase conversion rate. These two bidding strategies work best when combined with optimized targeting because they use conversion data to maximize your Google Ads campaign’s value.
If your campaign’s goal is to reach existing customers so they can use your services or buy more products, disable optimized targeting and use only manual targeting.