Affinity audiences coming to Google Search campaigns

In-market audience seasonal event segments like Christmas are also rolling out for Search and YouTube campaigns.

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Google announced Wednesday that it will be rolling out the two new audience targeting options for advertisers over the coming weeks.

Afiinity audiences. These interest audiences have been available for Google Display Network and Video campaigns for years. The audiences are built around interests determined by browsing behavior. Advertisers can drill into broad interest areas like Banking & Finance and Food & Dining to select audiences. Cooking Enthusiasts, Do-It-Yourselfers, Technophiles are some examples of the affinity audiences available.

Google Ads Affinity Audiences

As with other audiences in Google Ads, you’ll be able to target these audiences or simply observe how they perform in your campaigns.

In-market seasonal event segments. Google brought in-market audiences to Search in 2017. Audiences are built based on buyer intent signals such as recent search queries and browsing activity. Now, ahead of the holiday shopping season, Google is adding in-market seasonal segments such as Black Friday and Christmas to Search and YouTube.

While you’re not going to want to target everyone in-market for Christmas gifts, you can layer this segment on top of your other targeting to reach Christmas shoppers looking for or interested in the kinds of products you sell.

In May, Google announced it had added more in-market categories such as beauty, sports, education and real estate, including 30 retail categories.

Why we should care. These options can be used to help expand your prospecting campaigns to reach people based on their search and browsing signals rather than just specific query intent signals that you’re already targeting with keywords.

Affinity audiences tend to be used for higher-funnel awareness campaigns while in-market are aimed at helping you reach people deemed to be lower in the funnel and preparing to make a purchase.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, MarTech and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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