How custom audiences work in Display, Discovery, Gmail and YouTube campaigns

Google anticipated in Marketing Live 2019 that it would unify custom affinity and audiences with custom intent in a new dimension. This is how custom audiences are now available within Google Ads, for Display, Discovery, Gmail and YouTube campaigns. 

How do these hearings work?

You no longer need to create custom affinity or intent audiences. Now, when you configure a new audience from the top tab of the audience manager, you will have the option to configure it based on:

• People with any of these interests or purchasing intentions. 
• People who searched for a certain search term on Google.com and Youtube.

You can then click on the drop-down lists to choose the targeting dimensions of your audience, such as the specific URLs visited, the applications downloaded, and the types of places visited, such as video game stores or financial services. 

For example, you could create an audience based on people using an app like Tik Tok, or users visiting places like colleges, universities, or vegetarian restaurants, to expand your audience.

As you create a new custom audience, reach estimates will be shown in the panel on the right. However, these range estimates are not yet available for places and mobile apps. 

Custom audiences are then segmented by reach, consideration, or performance, based on your chosen campaign objective and bid strategy. 

Keep in mind that your targeting must comply with Google's advertising terms in reference to personalization, so "sensitive" keywords will be displayed contextually or not, as determined. 

Existing custom audiences

Any existing custom audiences or intent will be migrated to the custom audiences section. 

This is how the personalized audiences related to keywords will become the variable "people with any of these interests or purchasing intentions." This will also be the case for custom intent audiences in Display campaigns. However, in YouTube, Gmail and Discovery campaigns, the variable "people who searched for any of these terms in Google properties" will become the variable. 

Either way, keep in mind that you can identify your previous audiences that have been converted, both from custom affinity and from Display, since these are marked as "Custom Audience Search Terms" and will be located in the Type column. 

With your guidance, custom audiences can give you greater flexibility and specificity. These allow you to automatically choose the right audience based on the inputs you provide, the objective of your campaign, and your bidding strategy.