Summary : If you have not recently checked the audience targeting of your Google ads display campaigns, then please do so and (if suitable) please make use of the new targeting options like custom intent audience and life events which were not available earlier.
This post is not for someone who regularly creates new campaigns. If you do, then you already know about these features.
This post is for the Do-It-Yourself business owners who may not have time to regularly check their accounts.
If you are managing Google ads and if you have not looked deeply into your ad account for a long time, then I urge you to definitely try and create a new campaign, just to see and use the new ad types, optimizations and targetting available in Google ads now.
Example, please see the following screen shot from the Google ads account of a basement renovation company in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. ( This screen is presented when trying to edit audiences of their currently running display campaign).
On the right hand side are the 7 audiences being used by this account’s display campaign.
Do you think that the audiences listed on the left hand side might be more relevant for the basement renovation market?
I definitely think so and in fact I have seen that custom intent audience can work really well.
I am aware that these audiences were not available some time back.
So the business owner (or the agency that created that account and then probably forgot about it) were not really wrong – they chose the best possible audience available at that time. However as you might have heard before – ad accounts are not “do-it-and-forget-it” properties.
This level of audience fine tuning is relatively new. Changes like these are one of the reasons why you should regularly check your Google ads account, to make sure that you are using all the new features relevant for your business.
So, if you are running your own ad account and have not recently reviewed your audience targeting, then it may be a good idea to do so today.