Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 2 - Targeting

How specific can you really get with Google Ads Targeting?

Let's go inside Google Ads to answer your burning questions about Ad Targeting.

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales, bringing you more than a decade of Google Ads experience. I worked at Google for six years and now I'm a marketing coach, consultant, teacher, content creator, speaker, author and podcast host. I've worked with more than 10,000 Google Ads accounts, showing business owners and marketers how to make more money from paid ads, and now I'm here to do the same for you every week for free.

The way each episode works is this. I pick three of your burning questions to answer in detail from the hundreds of comments I receive on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads. You can find all those links in the show description, and if you want a chance to get your problem solved in a future episode, drop a comment on any of my social media. Remember, my Inside Google Ads course members get to do this with me live every month on an exclusive one hour call.

And now to our first Google Ads question about Targeting. Jean-Claude actually sent me a DM on TikTok and he asked, I'm a big fan of your interesting channel, really- always great videos.

Thank you Jean-Claude, or should I say, Merci. I have a question for the expert. Now, how exactly do you advertise to a target group that has visited specific websites? 

In Google Ads, how do you show ads to people who have been to specific websites? Here's our answer, Jean-Claude, and everyone else who wants to know.

In Google Ads, you can create something called a Custom Segment, and you can show ads to a Custom Segment from a Display Campaign, a Demand Gen Campaign, or a Video Campaign. You can also use this Custom Segment as part of your audience signal for a Performance Max Campaign. 

So, here's what you're going to want to do. In Google Ads, go to Tools, Shared Library, Audience Manager, and then Custom Segments. Within Custom Segments, there are a few different things you can do. You want to scroll down a little to the part that's about visited websites and there you can type in the websites people have visited who you want to show ads to.

Now, one important thing to keep in mind here is Google Ads is not promising to show ads exactly to people who visit those exact websites. What it will do is show ads to people who have visited websites like those websites - the language it uses is “websites similar to.”

If you just put one website in there, say your competitor is… JoesBusiness.com, and if you want to do competitor targeting, you would want to show ads to people who have visited websites similar to JoesBusiness.com.

I don't recommend doing just one website in there, because Google is going to be like, well, what is it about JoesBusiness.com?Why are these the kind of people you are looking to target? Google, find websites similar to that. There are probably a ton of websites that are similar to that. So if you're using this for Competitor Targeting, that's one way people like to use it, or to create really niche audiences around kind of affinity-based websites, it's not a great way to use it. 

I recommend you put at least five websites in there. For example, let's say that you're trying to reach small business owners. Many ways to do that with Google Ads, but one way is people who have visited websites similar to Shopify.com, Wix.com, Squarespace.com, etc. Why is that? Because the people who visit websites that help you manage your website are people who own businesses. They're logging into Shopify. It’s not going to be some large business doing that, it’s going to be a smaller business. So, that's one example of how you could do this. 

Another example, I once had a coaching client whose target audience was dental hygienists.

That's very specific, right? There's no way with existing Google audiences to reach dental hygienists. And so one thing we decided to do there was to create a Custom Segment based on visiting certain websites that dental hygienists would visit. There are certain associations they belong to, training programs they would take, forums they would chat in and professional accreditation connections. So those are the websites we put in there to create our own Custom Segment targeting that niche audience of dental hygienists.

Thank you Jean-Claude for your question. You can get very specific with your targeting in Google Ads, you just need to get creative with those Custom Segments.

Now, before we get to our second Google Ads targeting question, a quick reminder that you can receive the transcript of this episode in your inbox each week. So, if you're more of a visual than an auditory person, I know I'm definitely more visual than auditory, you can sign up for the Inside Google Ads newsletter on my website. The link for that is in the description of this episode so you can receive this whole thing in writing to refer back to later.

All right, it's time for our second Google Ads targeting question, which interestingly is the inverse of our first. Hitham on TikTok asks, how do you advertise Display Ads on a specific website that uses Google AdSense? 

So here's why this is the inverse. Jean Claude wanted to show ads to people who have been to certain websites. Hitham wants to show ads to people who are currently on certain websites. And so we do not do that with Custom Segments because that works in a completely different way.

We want to use Placements, and you can choose specific website placements for Display Campaigns and for Non-conversion-based Video Campaigns. With Display Campaigns and Video Campaigns you can choose specific websites you want your ads to run on and specific apps as well. 

The way you do this is in the Settings for your campaign, you go to Audiences, Keywords and Content first (confusingly, got to love that new Google Ad's interface), Content, and Placements. And from there, there are three kinds of placements you can choose: Websites, Apps and YouTube channels for video.

Now, Placements is not very scalable, and it can also get quite expensive if these are really in-demand placements. So I recommend if you do want to do content targeting that Topics can be a much easier way to scale. And then Display/Video Keywords can actually be a better way, in my opinion, to get really specific.

Display/Video Keywords is where you choose certain keywords that you want to show ads against. Not from a search perspective, but being like, that keyword is in the text on that page. Let’s say someone is reading an article that mentions dental hygienists, and so you want an ad on that.

These are your different kinds of Content Targeting. You can do Placements, Topics, Display/ideo Keywords. And this question was about Placements specifically, so your placement options are Websites, Apps, and YouTube channels. I personally don't use Placements in my ad strategies but I get versions of this question a lot.

Now, we've been focusing on Display and Video Campaign targeting here, but of course, that's not the only place you can get really specific with your Google Ads targeting. So let's cover Search Targeting for our third question today. 

An anonymous user on TikTok asks, you've suggested using audiences in Targeting Mode for Search campaigns in one post - that's true. But in this post, you've suggested adding audiences on Observation Mode - also true. I'm a little bit confused right now. 

First, of all, I'd like to thank anonymous user on TikTok for phrasing this in a really friendly, non-confrontational way. That doesn't happen so much. They're basically saying in one post, you said use audiences on Targeting in Search campaigns and another post, you said, add audiences in Observation Mode in a Search campaign. What is it Jyll? Pick one. 

I SO love that you're paying close attention. Let's explain. 

With a Search campaign and a Standard Shopping campaign, you can choose to add audiences on Observation mode or on Targeting mode.

Observation mode means, “I want to be eligible to show my ads to anyone searching for my keywords. And if they're also on one of these audience lists, make a note of it. Observe that for me so I can review that data later.” So Observation Mode doesn't affect the performance or placement of your ads at all; it just collects data.

Targeting mode means, “I want to show ads to people who are searching for my keywords and match one of these audiences. So if someone is searching for my keywords, but they don't match one of these audiences I've chosen, I don't want to show an ad to them.” That's Targeting mode. Targeting mode limits the reach of your Search campaigns because someone has to not only be searching for one of your keywords, they have to also match one of those audience lists you've selected.

Generally, if you want to test layering audiences over Search, I recommend Observation as a starting point. As I said, it doesn't affect performance, it doesn't affect the placement or the running of your ads, you're just collecting data - and data is always a good thing for decision-making.

And then, once you've observed how certain audiences perform, you may say, “Hey, people who recently started a business tend to convert more than people who have recently left their job.” I'm just making this up, right? So that can help you then decide whether to limit the reach of my campaign by adding audiences on Targeting just to certain audiences. 

Another really creative way to use Targeting mode and Search campaigns is to say, “Look, there are some keywords that I can't advertise on. They're just too broad. I get too much irrelevant traffic. But if someone's searching for those keywords and they match one of my audiences, okay, then I want to advertise to them.”

This is very commonly used in a B2B context, and I actually did something like this with an ecommerce client. This is back when I actually managed GoogleAads for people, which I don't do anymore, but they had tried running Shopping campaigns, having their product show up in Google Search results.

But it didn't work well for them because they were a second-hand clothing store. So if someone is searching for, you know, a Gap dress, chances are they're not looking for something second-hand, so Shopping ads never worked well for this client. But what we did, what I did for them, is launched a Shopping campaign, but then I added a Remarketing list of their website visitors on Targeting mode. And so in much simpler English, what that means is I told Google, “I do want to show Shopping ads, but only to people who have visited my website before. If they have never visited my website before, I do not want to show them a Shopping ad.”

And so what that meant is when people who had been to this business's website before and therefore were interested in secondhand clothing, were familiar with this business and how they sold secondhand clothing, and if they searched for, you know, Gap dress or maybe t-shirt, whatever it might be, they could then see those Shopping ads. And that worked well. We were able to achieve higher growth with this campaign than with any other kind of Paid Search campaign we were running, which is not surprising. It's Remarketing! 

Can you get super specific with your Google Ads targeting? Absolutely. Custom Audience Segments, Content Targeting like Topics, Placements, and Keywords, and Audience layers on Search campaigns are just some of the ways to ensure you're reaching your target customers effectively.

If you want a step-by-step tutorial visually about how to execute everything we spoke about today, you should look into my membership course Inside Google Ads. Yes, it has the same name as this podcast. That's where I show you everything Google won't tell you about managing your ads effectively and efficiently. Inside Google Ads has more than a hundred in-platform Google Ads tutorials, it's frequently updated and you get direct access to me in a one hour membership call each month. Inside Google Ads is the best way to get my Google Ads training at an affordable price. 

You can learn more about Inside Google Ads, the membership course at learn.jyll.ca that's J-Y-L-L.ca, or click the link in the description with this episode of Inside Google Ads The Podcast. 

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next week Inside Google Ads.

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