Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 24 - Audience Layering

You may have heard about people talking about layering audiences or stacking audiences in their paid ads. That's a little piece of jargon we use when we want to add multiple audiences to our campaigns to narrow the reach and get really specific. It's a common Meta Ads practice. 

Maybe you want to reach people who like dogs and cats and pet accessories to market your new line of, I don't know, combination pet houses for dogs and cats. 

So can you do this in Google Ads? Can you layer audiences? 

Of course you can. It's one of my absolute favourite topics, so let's talk about it. 

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for other brands at Google, and now I work for you.

This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 24, Audience Layering. 

Our first question today comes from shevibesveg on Instagram and they ask, what about if you want to layer it? So like if I'm trying to hit luxury apartment renters, I could do In-Market for apartments and luxury shoppers, but, “and,” “or”... How do you make sure it's “and”? 

When you add multiple audiences to a campaign, it always works like “or,” so if you were to launch a campaign and add In-Market for Apartments, and Luxury Shoppers is an Affinity so Affinity Segment > Luxury Shoppers, that would target people who are either In-Market for Apartments or Luxury Shoppers. 

If you want to target people who are In-Market for Apartments and Luxury Shoppers, you need to create a Combined Segment. You can do this from Audience Manager, or you can do it within the campaign itself, or within the ad group, when you're actually editing your audience segments. 

Now, one thing I have to mention, I spoke about this in Episode 9, which was about Custom Segments, is the idea of non-linear targeting. You want to reach people who want to rent luxury apartments, so you're thinking, “Okay, apartments plus luxury.” And that absolutely can work, but it's not necessarily the best strategy or the only strategy that can work. 

I encourage you to think non-linearly about what other ways you could get to that desired outcome. 

For example, someone who could afford a luxury apartment and wants a luxury apartment, maybe they're not just a luxury shopper. Maybe they're a luxury traveler. Maybe they're in-market for fine jewelry or exotic travel or vacations. 

I encourage you to think about what else about this person may be a helpful way to target them. And the reason I know that that works is because I've seen it time and time again. 

For example, one client I worked with at Google sells luxury purses. There's an In-Market audience of people in-market for purses. Let's target people In-Market for Purses! But most people in-market for purses are not necessarily looking for a luxury purse. They're just looking for a functional purse. And so what they did is they also targeted the Affinity Segment Luxury Shoppers. And what do you know? The Luxury Shopper segment actually performed better for them than the In-Market for Purses segment. 

So although this isn't an example of a Combined Segment, it shows you that the most obvious answer for your audience targeting or audience layering isn't necessarily the best answer. 

When you're creating one of these Combined Segments, you could also include remarketing lists. So you can include website visitors or your existing customer list in combination with some of Google's audiences. And once you have a Combined Segment, you can apply it to a Display or a Video campaign. You can also use it in a Search campaign for either Targeting or Observation, but you can't add it to a Demand Gen campaign. You can't add it to PMax as part of an Audience Signal, and you can't add it to a Shopping campaign, so just keep that in mind. The places you can and can't use your combined segments. 

Our next question today comes from Lucawiebutter on TikTok, and they ask, how do I add a Targeting layer in a Shopping campaign? 

What you want to do in your Shopping campaign is choose Audiences on the left, Add Audience Segments, decide whether you want to add those audiences to the whole campaign or a specific ad group, and then choose between Targeting and Observation. 

Targeting means you only want to show ads to people if their query, their search, matches to something in your Shopping feed and they match one of the audience lists you select. Whereas if you select Observation mode, it means you still want to show ads to whoever is searching for things that match to items in your Shopping feed, but if they match this audience list as well, just collect that data. 

So put another way, choosing Observation won't affect the performance of your ads at all. It's just a way to collect data, whereas choosing Targeting is going to really narrow the reach of your Shopping campaign to only show to people who both match the search and match the audience. But remember, it's a Shopping campaign, so you still need a user to actually search for something for your ads to show. 

And everything I've just said about adding Targeting in a Shopping campaign works the exact same for Search campaigns as well. 

If you want to see step by step how to actually create a Combined Segment or how to actually add those audiences to your Shopping or Search campaign, you should check out my course Inside Google Ads. That's where you'll find more than 100 in-platform tutorials that'll teach you everything you need to become a Google Ads expert. 

Our last question for today comes from HelloMrCat on TikTok. And they ask, what are the most common ways to target an audience now that Similar Segments are gone? What can you do instead? 

It is true, Similar Segments used to exist in Google Ads and they are gone. 

So before I tell you what you can do instead, let's recap what a Similar Segment was (rest in peace). 

So Similar Segments were automatically created by Google from your remarketing lists when there was enough data to do so. And Similar Segments allowed you to show ads to people who, to quote Google, “share characteristics with people on your existing remarketing lists.” 

So the most similar functionality to that in Google Ads today is a Lookalike Segment. But the big caveat is you can only use Lookalike Segments in a Demand Gen campaign, nowhere else - but that is most similar. 

If you look up how Google defines a Lookalike Segment, it is “people who share similar characteristics.” Right? But the downside to Lookalike Segments is they can be really large. It's actually probably why Google's doing it this way instead of a Similar Segment. 

So when you create a Lookalike Segment, it is country-specific, just the way it works with Meta Ads, and you can choose between 2.5% to 10% of a country that is most similar to your remarketing list. 

So think about that. For most people listening to this, your remarketing list is going to have what? If you're lucky, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. 

So if you're targeting a country like the United States, which has more than 300 million people, even 2.5% of that country who is most similar to your remarketing list is going to be a ton of people. Keep that in mind. 

So what I recommend as the best replacement, so to speak, for Similar Segments is something called Optimized Targeting. And the easiest way to understand Optimized Targeting is that it's like a Similar Segment of your converters. So rather than being similar to one of your existing remarketing lists, Optimized Targeting will look at people who converted, and then find other users who are most similar to your converters. 

So it's not exactly the same as what Similar Segments did, but in my opinion, for most use cases, that's actually better. Optimized Targeting is turned on by default for most Display, Video, and Demand Gen campaigns. So if you want to turn it off, if you don't want that, you'll have to turn it on or off within your ad group settings. 

There are many ways to layer your audiences in Google Ads, bringing together Affinity Segments, In-Market Segments, Detailed Demographics, Life Events, Website remarketing, Customer List remarketing, YouTube remarketing, App remarketing, and Custom Segments with even more optional add-ons like Lookalike Segments or Optimized Targeting or Audience Expansion.

Basically, if you can dream it, you can target it. You might just have to get a bit creative, a bit non-linear, if you will, to test until you hit that audience sweet spot. 

And of course, I would be remiss not to mention that your creative itself is going to be just as important in ensuring you're reaching and appealing to that target audience, just as much as your audience targeting. 

For your Insider Challenge today, let's get you thinking non-linearly. This is an actual client question I got in a coaching call about two years ago now, so I'm going to pose it to you. 

Your Google Ads client has a service they offer for dental hygienists. So your target audience is dental hygienists, not dentists, hygienists. How would you reach dental hygienists using Google Ads? 

You can participate by sending me your response to this challenge or any episode’s challenge. The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real-life Google Ads problem solving. 

Shoot me an email at thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram.  

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

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