Google Ads: Targeting Options

This article goes over the targeting options that are available in Google Ads.

Types of Targeting covered in this article:

• Location Targeting
• Audience Targeting
• Demographic Targeting
• Topic Targeting Managed
• Placement Targeting
• Ad Schedule Targeting
• Devices Targeting

Targeting Keywords

1. Broad Match

Ads are triggered for searches that relate to your keywords, including synonyms, related concepts, or relevant variations.

Example: Keyword: bicycle shop

2. Phrase Match

Ads are triggered for searches that include the meaning of your keyword, with words before or after your keyword allowed.
Example: Keyword: buy mountain bike

3. Exact Match

Ads only appear for searches that have the same meaning or intent as the exact keyword. Google allows slight variations like misspellings or plurals, but it remains tight.
Example: Keyword: best electric bike

4. Negative Keywords

Ads are prevented from showing for searches containing specific terms that you don’t want to target.
Example: Negative Keyword: cheap

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Location Targeting

A setting that lets you choose your target locations to reach out to your customers. 

• Location targeting helps you focus your advertising on the areas where you'll find the right customers, and will hopefully help you increase your profits as a result.
  • We suggest that you choose regions where your business can serve your ideal customers.
• Keep in mind that you can also select locations to exclude in your campaigns if you don't want your ads to show in specific regions.
  
  

 

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Audience Targeting

Audience targeting can be used for targeting or used for observation.

• Targeting: Targeting restricts the reach of your ad group
  • In addition to narrowing your reach, you have the option to use custom bids or bid adjustments on specific criteria within your targeting.
• Observation: The reach of the campaign is not limited
  • Data is reported for ads that meet the criteria selected for both observations and targeting.
  • In addition to observing the performance of criteria, you have the option to use custom bids or bid adjustments on specific criteria within your observations

 

Detailed Demographics

Enables you to reach broad segments of the population that share common traits, such as college students, homeowners, or new parents.

Segment Name	Display	Gmail	Search	Video
/Education	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Education/Current College Students	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Education/Highest Level of Educational Attainment	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Education/Highest Level of Educational Attainment/Advanced Degree	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Education/Highest Level of Educational Attainment/Bachelor's Degree	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Education/Highest Level of Educational Attainment/High School Graduate	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Employment	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Company Size	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Company Size/Large Employer (1k-10k Employees)	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Company Size/Midsize Employer (250-999 Employees)	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Company Size/Small Employer (1-249 Employees)	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Company Size/Very Large Employer (10k+ Employees)	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Industry	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Industry/Construction Industry	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Industry/Education Sector	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Industry/Financial Industry	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Industry/Healthcare Industry	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Industry/Hospitality Industry	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Industry/Manufacturing Industry	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Industry/Real Estate Industry	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Employment/Industry/TechNOlogy Industry	NO	NO	YES	NO
/Homeownership Status	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Homeownership Status/Homeowners	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Homeownership Status/Renters	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Marital Status	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Marital Status/In a Relationship	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Marital Status/Married	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Marital Status/Single	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Parental Status	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Parental Status/Parents	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Parental Status/Parents/Parents of Grade-Schoolers (6-12 years)	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Parental Status/Parents/Parents of Infants (0-1 years)	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Parental Status/Parents/Parents of Preschoolers (4-5 years)	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Parental Status/Parents/Parents of Teens (13-17 years)	NO	YES	YES	YES
/Parental Status/Parents/Parents of Toddlers (1-3 years)	NO	YES	YES	YES

 

Affinity Audience

• With affinity audiences, you can reach people based on a holistic picture of their lifestyles, passions, and habits. 
• Affinity audiences have demonstrated a qualified passion for a given topic, allowing advertisers to reach the people that matter most with their products or offerings.

 

Custom Affinity Audience

With custom affinity audiences, advertisers can create audiences that are more tailored to their brands, compared to more broad, TV-like affinity audiences. Custom affinity audiences are created by using a combination of:

• Interests entered as keyword phrases
• URLs to create interest categories based on the content of the website
• Types of places that people are interested in, or their lifestyles and passions
• Apps that an ideal customer might be interested in.
  • This doesn't mean that your ads will show on the apps you specified, but rather to users that have similar apps on their mobile devices.
  • For example, if you enter Google Fit, Google Ads will find users that have fitness-related apps.

 

Life Events

• Engage with viewers on YouTube and Gmail around important life milestones, like graduating from college, moving homes, or getting married.
• By understanding when these moments are taking place, you can tailor your advertising to reach the right users with the right messages.

 

In-Market Audience

• Select from these audiences to find customers who are in the market, which means that they're researching products and are actively considering buying a service or product like yours.

 

Custom Intent Audiences

• Display
  • You can use custom intent audiences to segment your ad groups for a specific vertical or landing page.
  • You can use auto-created segments, or define your own audience by entering in-market keywords, URLs and apps related to products and services that your ideal customer is researching across sites and apps.

• YouTube

  • Custom intent audiences can help you reach new customers on YouTube based on the terms they use to search for your products or services on Google.com.
    • You can select from 300 to 500 keywords that your ideal audience would most likely use in a search.
    • Focus on general keywords to reach as many people as possible.
    • For example, if you own a sporting goods store, you might want to choose keywords like "basketball shoes" instead of more specific keywords like "discount blue high top basketball shoes."

 

Remarketing

• You can also reach people who have already engaged with your company’s products and services, including past visitors to a website, mobile app, videos, or customers who have given you their contact information. 
  
  

 

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Demographic Targeting

 

Demographics for Display

• Age: 
  • "18-24," "25-34," "35-44," "45-54," "55-64," "65 or more," and "Unknown"
• Gender: 
  • "Female," "Male," and "Unknown"
• Household income:
  • “Top 10%,” “11-20%,” “21-30%,” “31-40%,” “41-50%,” “Lower 50%,” and “Unknown”
• Parental status: 
  • "Parent," "Not a parent," and "Unknown"

 

Demographics for Search: 

• Age: 
  • "18-24," "25-34," "35-44," "45-54," "55-64," "65 or more," and "Unknown"
• Gender: 
  • "Female," "Male," and "Unknown"
• Household income: 
  • “Top 10%,” “11-20%,” “21-30%,” “31-40%,” “41-50%,” “Lower 50%,” and “Unknown”

 

Demographic targeting for Google Ads Video campaigns can include:

• Age: 
  • "18-24," "25-34," "35-44," "45-54," "55-64," "65 or more," and "Unknown"
• Gender: 
  • "Female," "Male," and "Unknown"
• Household income: 
  • “Top 10%,” “11-20%,” “21-30%,” “31-40%,” “41-50%,” “Lower 50%,” and “Unknown”
• Parental status: 
  • "Parent," "Not a parent," and "Unknown"

 

Refine your strategy

• Targeting: Demographic targeting can be combined with other targeting strategies.
• Exclusions. You can also exclude demographic categories so you don’t show your ads to certain demographics.
• Customize your bids. While still showing your ads everyone, you can place higher (or lower) bids for a certain demographic group

 

 

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Topic Targeting

Only for Display & Video

• You'd like to show your ads on a broad set of websites related to certain topics.
• For example, if you sell bicycles and know that your customers also like hiking and camping, you can try advertising on a large number of websites by selecting the Hiking and Camping subtopic to show your ads on webpages about this topic.
• You'd like to quickly ramp up your ad delivery.
• If you'd like to prevent your ads from appearing on pages about specific topics that aren't performing well or are unrelated to your business, you can exclude those topics. 
  
  

 

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Managed Placement Targeting

Only For Display & Video

Placements are locations on the Google Display Network where your ads can appear. A placement can be a website or a specific page on a site, a mobile app, video content, or even an individual ad unit.

The Basics

• The placement has to be part of the Display Network for your ads to show there.
• If a specific website you target has an equivalent app, your ads can also show there. 
• You can only add managed placements to certain campaign types: "Display Network only," "Search Network with Display Select," and "Video."
• As with all Google Ads, you'll compete with other advertisers to show your ads on placements you select.
• If you choose popular sites or are just getting started with advertising on the Display Network, you may need higher bids to get impressions. You can always adjust your bids later.

Why add managed placements

• Show your ads only on specific placements you choose
  • If you want to run ads on the Display Network but only on placements you’ve hand-picked, you can do so with managed placements.
    • For example, if you sell travel packages and want your ads to appear on a particular website or a specific page about travel, add it as a managed placement.
• Show your ads on placements where your customers spend time
  • If you know of a website that your customers visit, consider adding it as a managed placement.
    • For example, if your typical customer spends a lot of time on example.com and you want your ads to appear there, add it as a managed placement.

• Get more (or less) traffic from placements by setting individual placement bids
  • If you find that advertising on a specific site works well, you may decide to increase your bid for just that one site to be more competitive and increase your potential exposure on that site.
    • On the other hand, you may want to reduce your bid for another placement that may not provide as many conversions.

 

 

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Ad Schedule Targeting

You can use the ad schedule to:

• Specify certain hours or days of the week when you want your ads to show.
• Set bid adjustments to increase or decrease your bids for specific days and times.
  
  

 

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Devices Targeting

Only For Display & Video

• For Display and Video campaigns, you can target specific device types, operating systems, device models, and ad inventory (spaces where publishers allow ads to run), as well as carriers and wireless networks. 
• You can set targeted bid adjustments for tablets, mobile phones, and desktop computers.