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Google Introduces New Slider Setting to Target Similar Audiences

Further to our blog post on June 7th 2019: Google Introduces New Automated Bidding Controls for Ads, at the ‘Google Marketing Live‘ show in the U.S. Google also announced the introduction of a new slider setting to target similar audiences. This similar audience targeting is a simple yet powerful tool for reaching individuals who share interest profiles with existing customers.

By targeting similar audiences, advertisers can reach more potential customers who share similar behavior to the audiences already selected. Similar audience targeting combines the audience data you selected, Google’s rich audience data, and an intelligent look-alike modeling algorithm to build a custom audience of users who are likely to engage, click, or convert with your ads.

The following audience types can be used with similar audience targeting:

First-party
Affinity
In-market
Custom affinity
Custom intent
Combined
Target similar audiences

Advertisers can select first-party, affinity, in-market, or custom lists. (If no first-party audience lists are selected, Display & Video 360 will show similar audience lists based on the page the ad will serve on).

Then select Similar audience settings, and use the slider to control how audience lists will be expanded. There are a total of 5 segments you can adjust the slider to (Off being the default setting). A forecast of how many available impressions will be shown below the slider as it’s adjusted.

Note that the impressions forecast is not available for custom lists, combined audiences, and audio line items. It is also not available when there are “AND” segments and when there are very large user lists.

These are the options for the slider settings:

  • Off (default)
  • More similarity – will prioritize targeting the most similar additional audiences.
  • Balanced – is an intermediate option that balances similarity with additional scale.
  • More reach – will prioritize expanding your reach.
  • (Optional) Exclude first-party lists – Select this to exclude first-party user lists to reach new people with similar interests to your existing audience

There are some restrictions for similar audience targeting:

  • the list must have active users in the past 30 days
  • the list must contain 500 or more members
  • the impressions forecast widget is not available for similar audience targeting.
  • the following lists are not expandable: Third-party, new mobile, installed apps, or any negatively targeted list
  • TrueView line items are not supported

If you want to know more about how using this setting to target similar audiences can help the digital marketing of your business through Google Ads, please contact us for further details.