Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 51 - Audience Challenges
Audience targeting in Google Ads is complicated. I should know, I've been writing a book about it since 2022.
We think of Google as a search platform, so all the powerful audience targeting features often get overlooked.
Today, I'm answering three of your burning questions about challenges you're facing with audience targeting in Google Ads. Specifically, how to get Customer Match lists to work effectively, how to find your audience when you operate in a sensitive interest category, and whether or not you should use audiences with your Search and Shopping campaigns.
Let's get into it. I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you.
This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 51: Audience Challenges.
Our first question comes from Carolineasiala5016 on YouTube, and they ask, what are your thoughts on targeted match lists? We have a big list of emails we can target for our services, but again, only got spam conversions when we ran display advertising.
Customer Match is what Google Ads calls the feature that lets you upload your customer data to Google Ads. For example, a list of customer email addresses or phone numbers or other personally identifiable information.
My thoughts are that it's fabulous and one of the most important things you can do in your account if your account is eligible, which we'll come back to. However, the way Caroline's question was worded, they wrote, “we have a big list of emails we can target for our services.” And then they said that they ran it in Display and only got spam.
I have three important things to say about that.
First, the way it's worded, it sounds like these may have been cold emails, like purchased emails, not users who opted in to have their information shared with this company. You cannot upload that to Google Ads. It's against Google Ads policy. To use Customer Match, users have to have opted into that, given consent. Consent is key.
Second, running in Display, Optimized Targeting is on by default, which gives Google permission to show your ads, well, technically to people who are most likely to convert, but practically to whoever Google likes. It's like running Performance Max. It turns your Customer Match list into a signal and then shows ads to whoever, rather than using it to only target people on your list.
Third, Display is garbage. In Episode 35 of this podcast, I explained why I hate Display campaigns. So for this tactic to work, I recommend using a Demand Gen campaign instead rather than Display, as the rate of signed-in Google users is much higher, placements are much better, and the traffic quality from Demand Gen tends to be better. I talked all about that in Episode 32 of this podcast, which is all about Demand Gen.
So yes, you should use Customer Match in Google Ads and you should use it properly by targeting the list in a Demand Gen campaign or a Search campaign (we'll get to that later in the episode) or a YouTube campaign, or by using your customer list as a seed list for a Lookalike segment in Demand Gen. Test that versus Optimized Targeting in two different Demand Gen ad groups and see how you go for prospecting.
But in order to be eligible to use Customer Match like this for targeting purposes, you need 90 days of account history and, here's the killer, $50,000 in lifetime spend. This is to keep the spammers out, in my opinion.
But just having the list in your account, even if you don't meet those requirements, can still be valuable. Don't get discouraged if you feel like, I'm never gonna spend $50,000 on Google Ads, I'll never be able to use Customer Match. You can still use your list for observation and more importantly, all of your Smart Bidding algorithms will use your Customer Match data to guide bidding decisions. So, even if you're not able to target the list, you still kind of are because Smart Bidding uses it as a signal.
Please get consent from users and upload their information to your Google Ads account to use Customer Match. There's a reason this is always something I check for when I do Google Ads account audits, regardless of the size of the account.
Speaking of audits, if you'd like me to audit your Google Ads account and tell you exactly what you can do to improve performance, you can book an audit with me. And by popular request, I've actually just added a lower tier to my audit pricing. My starting price used to be $900, but I had a lot of smaller businesses, including podcast listeners, say, Jyll, I just have two campaigns. Do I still need to pay that much? Check out the link in the episode description to see my new audit pricing structure.
And, I've also added another option to my audits. You see, last month I live streamed four Google Ads account audits online on my YouTube channel and LinkedIn profile. I really audited these accounts in real time and shared that with you. And those videos are so popular with beginner and experienced practitioners alike, so because of that, I've added another option to my audit pricing, and this is 100% completely optional, but if you give me permission to live stream your Google ads account audit, then you get 50% off the price of your audit.
Again, completely optional, but it is there to make my audits more affordable for you, if price is a barrier. I audit accounts with just one campaign. I audit accounts with more than a hundred campaigns. You can learn more on my website, jyll.ca or follow the link in the episode description.
Our second question today comes from Elizabeth Cintron on LinkedIn, and they ask, how to get around medical restrictions when building Custom Audiences?
All right, let's clarify the premise, and then we'll answer Elizabeth's question. Medical restrictions when building custom audiences refers to Google's sensitive interest categories, which includes things like personal beliefs, employment, access to credit, healthcare, medicines, and on and on.
If you operate in one of these sensitive interest categories, there are restrictions on the kinds of things you can and can't do in Google Ads to comply with local laws, to be ethical or just because of Google policy. And one of those restrictions is around audience targeting. Specifically, if you're in a sensitive interest category, you cannot use any kind of remarketing, including Customer Match. You can't use Custom Segments, as Elizabeth mentioned, and you also can't use Lookalike Segments or Audience Expansion.
Now, interestingly, and I confirmed this with Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads product liaison herself as part of finalizing my upcoming book, you can use Optimized Targeting in a sensitive interest category, and you can use Audience Signals. And of course, you can still use Google's audiences like life events, affinity, et cetera, and you can do some demographics and detailed demographics.
So anyway, how to get around the restrictions?
We do need to follow policy, but when you don't have targeting options available that you'd like, that's the time to use what I've coined non-linear targeting.
For example, rather than saying, “I sell plastic surgery, I need to target people interested in plastic surgery” - I would call that linear targeting, straight line to destination, but we can't do that. So instead we say, “My target customer, who is interested in plastic surgery, what else might they be interested in? How else might I reach them?” That's non-linear targeting, taking the scenic route around to your destination.
Let's continue with plastic surgery. What Google audiences might be relevant here? What we would want to do is create a Custom Segment based on things they've searched for, websites they visited, et cetera. But we can't do that. It's restricted. We need to stick to Google's audiences. So maybe we target “people interested in beauty.” That's an Affinity Segment. Maybe we target “people in-market for anti-aging skincare products.” Maybe we target “people who are getting married soon,” which is a Life Event. I guess it depends on which of the plastic surgery services you're offering, right?
Since you can't use Custom Segments, you can't be super niche and exact, but you can still think non-linearly about how to reach your target audience, even in a sensitive interest category.
Now one more thing I'll say here, you can still use Smart Bidding and you can still use Optimized Targeting. So the most important lever you have if you operate in a sensitive interest category is actually not your audience targeting at all. It's your creative. You want ads that really appeal to your target audience and really don't appeal to your not target audience. I call this “creative-led targeting” because you leverage automated targeting, via Optimized Targeting or an audience signal in PMax, and automated bidding via Smart Bidding, but then tightly control and optimize your creative, that third piece of the puzzle. In doing so, user behavior guides the targeting towards those who are more likely to be interested in what you offer, those who are more likely to convert, since those who are not interested are not going to engage and those who are interested will. And that then teaches the algorithm what it needs to know to find more of those people for you.
Non-linear targeting, creative-led targeting. More about this in my upcoming book, Inside Google Ads, Everything You Need to Know About Audience Targeting.
Now, full disclosure, I am recording this episode one month before you're listening to it. So, “Real Jyll” right now has written 40,000 words and has about 5,000 more to go. I'll put a stake in the ground and say that “Future Jyll”, as you're listening to these words, has finished those last 5,000 words and the design of the book is currently being finalized.
Woohoo!
So, if you would like to be notified when my book is available for sale, I am targeting a March 2025 release date and you can sign up to be notified at free.jyll.ca. Just tick the box to be notified when my book comes out. The link for that is also in the episode description.
Note that this will not sign you up for my newsletter or podcast transcripts or anything else unless you choose those as well. I will only use that email to let you know about two to three times around the launch of the book and that's it. And of course, when I have a confirmed release date, you know I'll be doing a special podcast episode that day as well.
Our last question is from William Boggs on LinkedIn, they say, I have a request for a podcast episode, if I may. I'm wondering whether it's actually useful to use audience targeting in Search and Shopping campaigns. Since they're search term focused, does audience targeting really matter? Could you miss out on potential sales if you fail to include a segment or if Google doesn't recognize a customer as being part of a segment?
I love, love, love talking about the intersection of audience targeting and content targeting like this. And I actually did talk about this pretty recently in Episode 47 of this podcast, which was all about pairings. So in that episode, question two, I believe it was, I dove into remarketing lists for search ads, RLSA, and some tactics for that.
Today, to answer William's question, does audience targeting matter in Search and Shopping? And can it cause you to miss out on opportunities?
Yes, and yes.
There are three ways to use audiences with Search campaigns, and two of them also apply to Shopping.
First, you can use audiences to narrow your reach if search intent alone is too generic. As an example, let's say there's a lot of different accounting software companies out there. If I'm FreshBooks, I sell accounting software for small businesses. If I'm NetSuite, I sell accounting software for larger businesses.
The overlap in FreshBooks and NetSuite's target audience is likely pretty small. Now, both of these companies have such large advertising budgets, they probably wouldn't even care to do what I'm about to say, but let's say we do care. How do we fix that?
FreshBooks could advertise on the keyword “Accounting Software,” but add audiences on Targeting for “recently started a business” or “works at a small company.” Those are both Detailed demographic segments. They only want to advertise on searches related to accounting software. But if Google knows that the person searching is likely to run a small business or work at a small business, narrowing your reach with audience targeting, you can do that in Search and in Shopping.
Another way to narrow is by exclusion. You can only do this in Search, not in Shopping, but this is actually my preferred method - to William’s point, to ensure we don't miss out on people whom Google just doesn't know. So instead of adding audiences on Targeting for “people who work at small businesses,” we actually add audiences as exclusions for “people who work at large businesses.” Again, that's a Detailed demographic segment you can choose.
So if Google knows that the searcher works at a large company, exclude. We don't want to advertise, even if they're searching for accounting software. But anyone else who doesn't work at a large company, we’ll enter the auction. And that'll include people who Google knows work at smaller companies, and people for whom Google just doesn't know, so let's be safe and include them. Again, you can't exclude audiences in Shopping, but you can in Search.
The third tactic, and the most underrated in my opinion for combining audiences with Search and Shopping, is using audiences to expand your reach rather than narrow your reach.
I'll stick with the accounting example. And actually, I should say, FreshBooks is a Canadian company. I did work with them a bit when I worked at Google, but none of this is actual information about their business, okay? I just like using them for this example. Okay, disclaimer over.
Let's say FreshBooks wants to advertise to “people looking for free stuff,” like a free invoice generator. Or maybe they want to advertise to people “searching for competitors,” like Wave or Xero or QuickBooks. Just advertising to everyone searching for these things may not be profitable. It could be really expensive. Maybe they can't sustain that. However, if someone has visited the FreshBooks website before, or perhaps if someone was a previous FreshBooks customer who canceled within the last year, or if they simply fit our ideal customer segment, then we want to show them an ad.
Let's say someone's searching for a competitor. Maybe we only want to show an ad if they're on our customer list. If they're a current customer, that tells us they're at risk of churning. So we could have one kind of Search ad messaging to try to prevent that churn. And then if they're a past customer, we can have an ad messaging to try to win them back, perhaps with a promotion or by highlighting new features.
That's why I call this expanding your reach. You're advertising on searches that normally would be beyond your scope, normally would not be profitable, because they're too generic. But by using that audience targeting filter, they could become profitable for you if you know the searcher is the exact kind of person you're trying to reach.
There's my framework for you to think about layering audiences on Targeting for Search and Shopping. You can narrow your query reach by inclusion or exclusion, or expand your query reach by inclusion.
As you might be able to tell by the length of this episode, it's a longer one than usual, audience targeting is tricky. But when you get it right, wow, it really is like magic.
The closer we can get to turning Google Ads into your money printing machine, the better. And unlocking audience targeting the right way for your account is one of the best ways to build that money printing machine.
Today's Insider Challenge is this. Let's come back to the sensitive interest category. Let's say you just started working at a company that offers financial credit. So remarketing, Custom Segments, that stuff is off limits. How would you go about building a strategy for a Demand Gen campaign for a company that sells credit products?
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.
Last Episode's Challenge was this. You're running a Search campaign that's on a Maximize Conversions bid strategy. It drives 15 to 20 conversions per month at a CPA that ranges between $40 to $60, depending on when you look at it. Do you switch to a Target CPA strategy? Why or why not? What would you consider?
Here's how I think about this. The 15 to 20 conversions a month is lower than the 30 in 30 threshold I like to use for Smart Bidding, especially target-based Smart Bidding. The $40 to $60 CPA is also fluctuating. A $60 CPA is 50% higher than a $40 CPA. So while a $20 difference may not seem like a lot, from a bidding and performance perspective, that's a big difference.
How would I decide whether to switch from Maximize Conversions to Target CPA? In my opinion, the most important question is, is the advertiser happy? Are these good results?
For example, if anything below $100 CPA is acceptable, then heck yeah, let's switch, let's scale this thing up. Whereas, if their ideal CPA is actually $20, we are so far off, there's other things we'll need to fix to get that working before even thinking about a bid strategy switch.
The second thing I'd look at is budget. We know we need to spend at least our target CPA every day to sustain results. Based on the numbers here, our daily budget is somewhere between $20 to $40 per day. So that's probably lower than our target CPA, which is why we're not hitting at least 30 conversions a month. Looking at Search Impression Share will give me a sense of if we're limited by budget, because remember, we're on a Maximize bid strategy, so Google won't necessarily tell you that it's limited by budget. I'll also know if there's more opportunity out there. If we're capturing the full opportunity and Search Impression share is like 50%, then switching a bid strategy won't necessarily do us much good. But if there's a lot of opportunity out there, let's say our Search Impression share is less than 10%, then a switch to Target CPA with a potential future budget increase could work really well.
And then third, honestly, is vibes. Looking at the campaign overall, the kind of search terms we're getting, the number of keywords, how the CTR and CPC and CVR are looking.
All of this to say, does this feel like a campaign that can scale and grow? Or does this feel like a campaign that's destined to stay in the junior leagues? That's the kind of thing you build up over time with experience in Google Ads. And while I obviously would not completely advise based on vibes - I would do all the other things I said first - I do just want to be honest and acknowledge that vibes would probably play about a 10% to 20% role in my recommendation here.
What about you? Would you make the switch to Target CPA? What would you consider?
I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.