Last Updated on 4 September 2024 by Stu Edwards

Showing ads to the right people at the right time on the right device is essential for Google Ads success.

Google-Ads audience segments

If your campaigns aren’t leveraging what Google Ads audience segments can offer, and your ads aren’t visible to the right audiences, you’ll end up having a poor results / ROI.

This article explores the nuance of Google Ads audiences, and how to set up audience segments to connect with your target user – and improve your ad performance.

What are Audience Segments in Google Ads?

A segment refers to a group of people (from an audience) who behave similarly and have at least one common variable such as gender, age group, resident country, etc.

These audience segments help you reach the users you want to target.

You can create your own audience segments, or choose from existing ones provided by Google.

Here’s a screenshot of how you can choose different audience segments while setting up a campaign in Google Ads:

audience segment in Google ads example

Why are Audience Segments Important?

Audience segments in Google Ads offer multiple benefits to your business. Here’s what makes audiences so important for your campaigns:

1. Personalised Ads

You can reach your ideal customers with highly personalised ads.

Research shows that 76% of consumers say that personalised messages in ads persuade them to consider a brand and 78% say they are more likely to repurchase from such a company.

The following ad by Zapier leads to a blog post (not a landing page) which is triggered based on how the user has interacted with the Zapier site recently:

audience segment in action

When used right (and smartly), you can make Google Ads extremely personalised that deliver an exceptional UX.

2. High Engagement

An outcome of personalisation is improved ad engagement which includes CTR and conversions. This is because customised and relevant ads make it easy for your audience to connect with your ad and offer.

For instance, showing anniversary gifts to people who are single (absence of audience segments) will lead to poor engagement.

You’ll end up having a high impression rate with poor CTR all because of not selecting the correct segment.

3. Better ROI

Personalisation and engagement lead to high ROI.

Audience segments in Google Ads provide you with the opportunity to show your ads to the right people at the right time and location which optimises your ad spend. Your ads won’t be delivered to an irrelevant audience.

You improve ROI in two ways:

  1. By minimising budget leakages
  2. By improving targeting.

4. Data

Audience segments help you better understand your target audience.

You can compare different segments and see which ones perform better in terms of ROI. It provides you insights that you can use to refine buyer personas and improve targeting for other marketing and advertising campaigns.

For instance, showing the same ad to affinity and in-market segments will reveal different results. You can then figure out if your audience responds based on their interest or search activity for your products.

4 Types of Audience Segments

Google Ads offer you 4 major categories of audience segments that you can choose from.

google ads audience targeting

  • Google segments
    • Detailed Demographics
    • Affinity segments
    • In-Market segments
    • Life events
  • Your segments
    • Website remarketing
    • App remarketing
    • YouTube remarketing
    • Customer match
  • Custom segments
    • Search term based
    • Website / URL based
    • App based
  • Other segments
    • Combined segments
    • Optimised targeting
    • Audience expansion

Let’s look at each in detail:

1. Google segments

Google provides certain ‘out the box’ segments for you that are ready to use.

You can choose these prebuilt audience segments without extra work of developing your own. These include:

Detailed demographics: You can reach people based on demographics such as marital status, education, employment, etc. It focuses on the life facts of the audience:

detailed demographics audience segment in Google ads

Affinity segments: are a prebuilt segment that helps you reach people based on their interests and habits such as foodies, avid news readers, and business travellers:

affinity audience segment in Google ads

This segment is ideal for awareness campaigns where you want to target an audience based on their interests and hobbies.

In-market segments: consist of people who are actively researching and planning about a product or service. For instance, you can target people who are researching education, property, or telecom via the in-market segment:

in-market segment in Google ads

In-market segments is ideal for targeting mid and bottom of the funnel customers as they mostly have commercial or transactional intent.

Life events: This segment helps you reach people who are going through a specific life event such as marriage, moving, a new job, a new relationship, etc.

2. Your data segments

You can create your own data segments based on how people interact with your business. As you run ad campaigns on Google Ads, you will be able to create your own segments based on interactions.

Remarketing audiences, for example, is a common example of your data segments where you retarget people who have previously interacted with your website, business, app, and YouTube channel.

Customer Match is another way to create and use your own segments. You can upload a list of people from your CRM or email marketing tool and Google Ads will reach those people precisely. That is, you can reach people who are on your list via Google Ads.

You can also create similar segments based on people who have interacted with your business or your existing customers.

Google Ads matches the user behaviour of potential customers with an existing list of customers (you choose) and creates a new segment.

Similar segments are created automatically by Google Ads when you reach a certain number of visitors and meet thresholds.

3. Custom segments

You can create Custom segment audiences based on keywords, URLs, and apps.

custom segments in Google Ads

You can enhance the effectiveness of your segment by adding websites they visit and apps they use.

For instance, if you want to target people who use CRM, you can add relevant keywords and then use URLs of websites of leading CRM companies and blogs. Then Google will show your ads to people who have the same interests and also visit those websites.

Pro Tip: You can add your competitors URLs and keywords to a custom segment.

You can also target people based on an app they use such as a marketing or CRM app.

You have the option to use these 3 targeting options in any combination you find fit. For instance, you can use URLs alone or couple it with apps or you can use keywords and app users together. It’s your choice.

It gives you another way to reach your audience provided you have the necessary details about the people who you want to target.

4. Other segments

There are a few other segments that you can create to improve the targeting of your Google Ads campaigns.

A Combined segment is a popular audience segment that can be created by adding (or excluding) different audience segment types.

You can create combined segments in Audience manager by adding a list of different segments:

combined segments in google ads

It is a highly effective way to improve targeting and optimise your budget. One of the best ways to utilise Combined segments is to create groups that include your data segments and in-market to connect with people who didn’t buy from you but are still actively researching.

Optimised targeting is used by Google Ads automatically to improve your campaign’s performance to reach new audiences who are likely to convert.

Audience expansion is another type of auto-generated audience segment that focuses on targeting people who are similar to your selected audience and who are more likely to increase impressions, views, and clicks.

Optimised targeting currently works for Display, Video, and Demand Gen campaigns while audience expansion is available for video campaigns that use either product and brand consideration or brand awareness and reach goals.

Both of these segments are created automatically by Google for relevant campaigns and goals.

Google Ads audience segments and Campaign types

Annoyingly the audience segments aren’t always available to use across the different Google Ads campaign types.

The image below shows the which Google audience segments can be used across the individual campaign types.

Google Ads Audiences and campaign types

You can see that Custom Segments and Life Events aren’t applicable in Search and Shopping campaigns – and that Video, Demand Gen and Performance Max campaigns types can target all the audience segments…

How to Set Up Audience Segments in Google Ads

There are multiple ways to select and target an audience segment for a campaign (depending on campaign type and goals).

1. When you create a campaign, you can set up audience segments from Campaign settings > Audiences:

setting up audience segments in Google ads

You can choose all types of audience segments including combined and your data segments by clicking Browse:

audience segment details

2. You can later tweak audience segments for a live campaign by selecting the relevant campaign and clicking Audiences, keywords and content > Audiences from the left menu:

audience segments from campaign settings screenshot

Use these steps to switch audience segments in Google Ads. You can add, edit, and exclude segments based on campaign performance at any time.

3. You can create and manage Custom, Combined, and Your Data segments from Audience manager in Tools:

audience segments from campaign settings screenshot

This is where you can add segments for use in campaigns. You can only select prebuilt segments (that either you or Google Ads have created during campaign setup), you can’t define and create a new segment there.

To create a new audience segment, click the + sign and choose the relevant segment to set it up:

creating a new audience segment in the audience manager

Follow on-screen instructions to create a segment for use in campaigns.

5 Best Practices for Audience Segments in Google Ads

Here’s a list of tips and techniques to enhance the effectiveness of audience segments:

  • Define clear objectives: You need to define clear goals when creating a new audience segment or using one. The audience segment you choose must align with your campaign objective
  • Use first-party data: Leverage the data you already have to find similar audiences on Google Ads. Customer match is quite a helpful audience segment that helps you connect with people who are already on your list. This leads to the highest ROI because these people have already allowed you to contact them
  • Segment by purchase intent: Create a segment of the audience based on their purchase intent. This helps you increase sales by reaching an audience that’s more likely to make a purchase (and has reached the bottom of your sales funnel)
  • Use Your Data segments: Remarketing is now replaced by your data segment on Google Ads and it is one of the best ways to reach people who have interacted with your business already

Conclusion

Google Ads audience segments provide you with an amazing opportunity to target the right people and optimise your ad spend.

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses don’t use audience segments to their full potential and stick with Google’s prebuilt, broad segments.

Creating new audiences and leveraging your own data and creating custom segments require some level of technical knowledge and a clear understanding of the audience manager.

If you don’t have the necessary resources to do it in-house, consider getting help from an expert Google Ads agency.

Book a free call with a growth expert today and see how we can help you with audience segments.