What are audience signals in Google Ads Maximize Performance campaigns?

What are audience signals in maximizing performance advertising?

Audience signals are instructions from advertisers to Google about the audience they want their ads to reach. Audience signals are not exact targeting, but more like suggestions to help guide the algorithm in the right direction.

Google uses these signals to make your PMax campaigns better, depending on what you want to achieve. Importantly, audience signals are associated with ads and need to be provided every time you create a new ad group.

Benefits of using audience signals in performance maximizer ads

How to attract the right people to buy at the right time is a difficulty that online smart advertising has been overcoming. Performance Maximization (PMax) campaigns can help solve this problem by leveraging audience signals.

Enhanced targeting: Use PMax to create asset groups associated with specific signals. Audience signals and material asset groups must correspond one to one. Better audience identification: Google uses audience signals from PMax campaigns to identify the most valuable customers.

Audience suggestions: Audience signals set in PMax will serve as audience suggestions to Google, guiding Google to find the audience that best suits your product. Automated optimization: PMax uses machine learning to automatically optimize for the best performing audiences.

How to add audience signals to performance maximization campaigns

When setting up audience signals, you can choose from the following options:
Your data (remarketing lists, customer lists, etc.)
Custom audience segments (based on Google assets)
Interests and detailed demographics (hobbies, life events, etc.)
Demographics (age, gender, parental status, household income)
It is recommended to start with specific signals such as first-party data (your own data)

to get better advertising results.

1. Create audience signals for each separate creative asset group

Never add all audience signals to one asset group. For each audience signal, create a separate asset group to better organize your campaign structure.

We categorize audience signals into four different categories:Non-Converters:
Includes website visitors, people who added to cart, and people who have initiated checkout.
Converters: Includes individuals who have already purchased a product.
Demographic and interest-based targeting: Focuses on specific demographics and interests.
Custom segments and keywords: Involves creating segments based on custom and relevant keywords.

Each category can be further divided into subcategories for more detailed targeting.

Google does not directly show which audiences are converting, but rather uses asset group details and list metrics to show ad performance.

By associating audience signals with specific asset groups, you can determine which audiences are converting effectively. Essentially, this gives you more control over your campaigns.

2. Build custom segments and keyword lists
   Custom segments allow advertisers to target audiences based on their recent online activity, such as the searches they conducted and the websites they visited.
   When creating a custom segment, advertisers can enter keywords related to their ideal audience’s interests, or keywords that users might search for when looking for products similar to theirs.
   For example, a furniture company could target homeowner customers by selecting keywords and websites related to research or interior design services, as this indicates a potential need for new furniture.

Another helpful technique is to tell Google about your direct competitors. Make sure these competitors offer similar products, as Google will analyze their entire site, not just a few specific pages.

3. Add non-converters to audience signals (your data)
   Including audiences who have not purchased yet in audience signals, this kind of audience is already familiar with your product, and the overall conversion effect will not be bad, this is a must-do job.

4. Add converted audiences to audience signals (your data)
   This audience consists of customers who have already purchased from you. The goal is to provide Google with information about your existing customers. Google’s machine learning algorithms will analyze this data and identify new audiences with similar characteristics. This group is of the highest quality because they have already completed a purchase.

5. Add demographic and interest-based targeting
   These segments represent characteristics you think are relevant to your target customers, such as their age, gender, marital status, household income, or specific industries they might be interested in. The more precise you are in defining these segments, the more effective your targeting will be.