Running a Performance Max campaign alongside search, display, or other campaigns has become an increasingly useful ecommerce marketing strategy. However, marketers often struggle with the broad reach that Performance Max offers and managing the Performance Max assets effectively.
Many wish they could customize the audiences they target more precisely. While full control isn’t possible, audience signals allow you to guide Google’s automation in the right direction. You can even run Performance Max experiments using different audience signals to test what performs best.
Wondering what Performance Max’s Audience Signals do?
Simply put, they are suggestions you offer to a pmax campaign to direct it toward the audiences you wish to target.
This blog explores audience signals in depth, covers step-by-step ways to add them to your campaigns, and suggests a few practices to help you achieve desirable results.
Let us begin.
| Note: If you already know what Audience Signals are, directly jump to the section where we discuss how to add these signals to Performance Max campaigns. |
Table of Contents
What Are Audience Signals in Performance Max?
Performance Max audience signals are indicators that advertisers can give to manage and guide the campaign toward the intended target audience. To effectively assess the impact of these signals, it’s essential to delve into PMax reporting, which provides insights into key metrics and campaign performance.
Since Performance Max campaigns are automated and offer little control over where your ads are displayed, audience signals become the lighthouses guiding Google’s AI down the right path. Find out more about what a Performance Max campaign is in this blog. You can also explore how PMax search themes further influence targeting and help advertisers refine campaign performance.
Ads appear to different users based on previous performance, industry, assets, and other factors. Google has placed audience signals in Performance Max to allow people to guide Google as to which audiences they want to target.
Audience signals are applied only at the ad group level. Google’s machine learning models may take up to two weeks to process, integrate, and optimize newly added audience signals.
Utilizing accurate audience signals can greatly impact your campaign’s performance. It can bring in more clicks, increase engagement, and boost overall campaign performance.
Types of Audience Signals
- First-Party Data (e.g., customer lists, website visitors, remarketing audiences).
- Google’s Audience Segments (e.g., in-market, affinity audiences).
- Custom Audiences (e.g., based on keywords, URLs, apps).
- Demographics (age, gender, parental status, household income)
First-Party Data
First-party data i.e., “your” data allows you to utilize the data you’ve collected over time.
It is the best way to indicate to Google the type of audiences that you have previously targeted and the audiences that have already interacted with you. First-party data allows you to offer personalized customizations to Google like:
- Those who have visited your site
- Those who are high-value customers
- Remarketing Lists for people who have made a purchase or added products to their cart but left it
- Customer Match lists can be used to exclude or include users based on their email addresses and other data.
| Important: To ensure smooth usage of audience signals, follow these requirements: 1. The audience list should align with the campaign’s operating system. For example, an iOS campaign must use iOS device IDs. 2. Refresh audience lists at least once every 540 days to keep them effective. 3. Each list must contain at least 1,000 active and eligible users. |
Google’s Audience Segments
Google Audience Segments are groups of people that Google has perceived to have similar tastes, interests, and hobbies based on their online behavior. Under Google’s audience segments, you can find audiences like:
- In-market audiences: Audience lists generated based on users who have a higher intent to purchase particular products. Google separates these audiences in different categories and updates them based on user behaviour.
- Affinity Audiences: Affinity audience is the list of people that Google has compiled based on their strong interest in particular topics and thus are more likely to convert.
Custom Audiences
You can generate custom audiences for specific keywords or terms, URLs, and apps certain audiences download–it is the closest alternative to adding search terms to a performance max campaign. These custom audiences can help you target audiences that your competitors are targeting or audiences that are looking for similar products or services as yours.
| Bonus: Read what custom audiences are on this official Google page. |
Demographics
Demographics are an essential part of any audience-targeting strategy. Using demographic audiences, you can target users of specific age groups, genders, marital statuses, etc.
Depending on the industry and niche, advertisers can broaden their reach when looking for new customers using demographic data.
Using demographic data, you can target:
- Different Age groups
- Genders
- Household Income
- Location
How Do Audience Signals Work?
- Audience Signals can be added to asset groups. You can link multiple audience signals to a single asset group. These signals help Google identify the audiences you want to target.
- Audience signals direct Google towards the audiences that you want to target. It is imperative to note that these signals are just suggestions, not hard targets.
- Google might target audiences beyond those included in the audience lists.
- While audience signals can be added to different asset groups, performance max campaigns do not provide granular data for how well these signals have been utilized (there is a way to keep track of this, know how!).
- Consequently, it is hard to measure the impact that these signals have had on overall campaign performance.
- While Audience Signals in Performance Max are not direct targeting tools, these campaigns do optimize themselves over time. These audience signals are dynamic and help target users more effectively and can have a significant longer-term impact.
- Additionally, you can even employ audience signals for A/B split testing to optimize your audiences and your campaigns further. These tests and recorded results will further enhance Google’s targeting and can be incredibly beneficial in the long run. For more guidance, check out these Performance Max best practices.
Performance Max Audience Signals Examples
Let’s say that you run a store selling bikes for adults and children. You want to increase awareness about your store and choose to utilize a performance max campaign.
Over time, you begin to realize that the audiences being targeted need improvisation. Here’s what you can do to improve targeting:
- You can add an audience signal using the data you’ve gathered by running previous campaigns. You can even add a segment from Google analytics that provides the data for customers who have visited your website but left without making a conversion.
- Next, you could target audiences based on demographics. So you select the age range appropriate for a younger audience with assets focused on bikes for kids–i.e., you target parents (age 25-35) and those who are living in and around your city.
- Now, you wish to add an audience signal that targets more interest-based audiences, so you add affinity audiences to your target audience and look for people who have shown an interest in sports equipment or people who look for biking routes on Google Maps.
Taking these steps into consideration, once you launch the campaign, you will begin to notice higher engagement from different channels, increased clicks and a rise in traffic flow to your website.
This is how audience signals work and can be utilized to improve the performance of a campaign.
| Also read: Understand Shopify Audiences for better reach. |
How To Add Audience Signals To Performance Max Campaigns?
In this section, we cover how you can add audience signals to a performance max campaign. In a pmax campaign, you can add audience signals to an asset group. We cover the steps required to add audience signals from start to finish for each signal type.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, here are the basic requirements to run a pmax campaign:
- An active Google Ads account (that is linked to other Google platforms such as GA4)
- A pmax campaign with an asset group.
Identifying Your Target Audience
It is important to identify what your target audience is before you begin compiling your data. Here are some suggestions to help you identify your target audience for performance max campaigns.
1. Define your objectives: Clarify what you wish to achieve with a performance max campaign–is it increased reach? Do you want to achieve higher conversions? Set a clearly defined target.
2. Recognize the pain points: By clearly defining the pain points (like physical aid, lack of specialized sports equipment) your product solves, you can simplify who would require your product/service.
3. Research your industry and competitors: Find out who your competitors are targeting using keyword research and industry evaluation. Make a note of different factors that they consider. Focus on who they actively avoid and find out why.
4. Locate trends, dips, and developments: Stay active within the industry, find what is trending, and look for your industry’s peak season.
5. Compilation: Once you have all this data, combine it to create the ideal customer persona.
This persona will help you determine the audience segment where your primary target audience is.
Creating an Audience in Google Ads
First, let’s start with how you can set up audiences in a Google Ads account.
1. In your Google Ads account, navigate to the left side panel and click on ‘Tools 🛠️’> Shared Library>Audience Manager
2. On the screen, locate and click ➕ sign
3. Next, a pop-up window will open. Here, you can select which audience you wish to create. (for the sake of this blog, we’ve picked Website Visitors)
4. Name your segment, and select the users you want to add to the list (people who visit your website, etc.), and add other details according to your preferences.
5. At last, click on ‘Create Segment’ and you will now be able to add this audience to any advertising campaign.
Step-by-Step Process to Add Audience Signals to Asset Groups
Now, to add audience Signals to different asset groups, follow these steps:
(Step 1 is common for all types of audience signals)
Step 1. To begin, on your Google Ads account, locate the performance max campaign you wish to add audience signals. Go to the assets groups. Once located, towards the right side, you will spot ‘Signals’
| 💡If you’re seeing your asset groups listed in a tabular format, click on the ‘Summary’ button towards the right of the screen. |
Adding Audience Signals using First-Party Data
Step 2. Scroll down to find the ‘Your Data’ option. Here, you can add your pre-created audience list. To import data from GA4, click on ‘+ Add New Segment’
Step 3. You can now click on ‘Google Analytics Segment 4’. Ensure you have linked GA4 with your Google Ads account. Select the audience you want to add. Lastly, click Save.
Adding Audience Signals using Google’s Audience Segments and Demographics
In this section, we have clubbed how to add Google’s Audience Segments and Demographics since the process is the same.
Step 2. Scroll down and click on ‘Additional Signals’ A section titled ‘Interests & detailed demographics’ and ‘Demographics’ will show up. Select one according to your preference.
For users who want set audience signals according to the demographics, choose the age, gender, household income and marital status according to your preference.
Users who want to opt for Interest and detailed demographics can scroll through the interests offered by Google and make their choice. Lastly, click Save.
Adding Audience Signals using Custom Audiences
Step 2. Scroll down to locate ‘Your Data’. Here, locate ‘+ Add New Segment’
Step 3. Scroll down to find different audiences you can add to your asset group. Select one according to your preference and click ‘Save’
The Impact And Benefits Of Audience Signals On Campaign Performance
Audience signals can be a vital factor in contributing to precise targeting for performance max campaigns. Let delve deeper into how audience signals can be beneficial for campaign performance.
Enhance Targeting Accuracy
Audience Signals are equivalent to suggestions you give to Google’s AI to improve the audiences that your ads are appearing for. Performance Max offers automated targeting to simplify advertisers’ jobs.
Instead of manually adding the audiences that you wish to target for every single campaign, audience signals offer you the chance to refine an existing target audience.
Maximizing Ad Relevance and Engagement
Google has clearly stated that ads from your Pmax campaign will be shown to people it deems relevant even beyond your audience signals. But what you must know is that audience signals can become the guiding factors for leading Pmax in the right direction for most (if not all) of your audiences.
If the highly relevant ads are shown to the right audience, there are significantly higher chances of them engaging with your ads.
Over time, Google’s AI will adapt to user’s behavior and show more targeted ads for highly relevant audiences too.
Budget Allocation
One drawback of a performance max campaign (compared to other campaigns such as search, display, etc) is that there is an incredibly high chance of wasted ad potential. Adding audience signals to a performance max campaign can work as the guiding factors to reduce the chances of ads appearing for people who are not interested.
Additionally, one cannot even monitor exactly where their ads are being shown, which impacts our budget. Pmax campaigns are known to be costly, and this is the exact reason why.
| Did you know that Google Ads Audit helps you reduce wasted ad spend and improve ROI? |
Performance Max Audience Signals Best Practices
Here are a few tips to help you make better use of audience signals in performance max campaigns:
Focus on High-Intent Audiences
To start off, one of the best things you can do is target high-intent audiences with granular specificity. This will reduce the chances of wasted ad potential and provide Google with a clear picture of your primary audiences. This is especially useful when running Performance Max for store goals, where precision can significantly impact in-store visits or local conversions. For campaigns focusing on feed-only strategies, consider exploring PMax feed-only strategies.
Use First-Party Data for effectiveness
To ensure that you are fully using your audience signals, you can utilize first-party data (i.e., the data you’ve collected over time on your website) to support the specificity of the audience signal.
You can use data from customers who have converted on your website, returning customers, remarketing lists for search ads, leads that you can extract from other data, customers that you want to retarget, etc.
Begin with Specific Signals
It is important to remember that Google will target audiences beyond what you add in your audience signals. Thus, it is better to ensure that the audience signals you add are highly specific.
Over time, you can broaden your audience signal if the performance is satisfactory. You can further narrow your audience signal if you find the performance inadequate.
One Asset Group= One Audience Signal
On Google’s pmax campaign, you have the option to utilize all audience signals for a single asset group. Instead, use one highly specific audience signal for a single asset group.
Since Google only shows you which asset groups are performing well, this is an excellent strategy for determining which audience signals are working well for you.
Doing this allows for concise tracking and will provide you with granular data for future campaign planning.
Add Relevant Assets for Audiences
To run a pmax campaign, you must upload and create asset groups. While creating the campaign, you can only add a single asset group. But once the campaign has been created, you can add upto a 100 asset groups per campaign.
Try to create an asset group with a major focus on the audiences that it will be shown to. A focused theme centered around specific audience signals can highly impact ad performance and increase clicks and conversions. Matching your asset group content to Performance Max placements—such as YouTube, Search, Display, Gmail, and Discover—can also improve relevance and user engagement.
Combining Audience Signal Types-Demographic and interest based audiences
Using specific audiences for specific asset groups still stands true, it does not apply to demographic and interest-based audiences. Since demographics and interest-based audiences are extremely broad categories, it becomes a risk factor if used individually.
A better option would be to combine the two under a single asset group and utilize audiences with maximum specificity.
Opt for Continual Testing
Keep in mind that even if you apply all the aforementioned tips, it might take a significant amount of time for desired results to start showing. Performance Max campaigns utilize machine learning and AI which gradually optimize over time. Additionaly, audiences on different platforms might perform differently based on how they’re being shown the ads. You can check out different pmax ad examples for more information.
While it automatically improves the targeting and ad relevance, it is important that you keep track of different factors affecting your ad performance. Continually monitor and keep testing variations of audience signals to get the best outcomes.
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Conclusion
Performance max campaigns can be highly effective if given the right audience signals. Using high quality data to create audience segments and form the performing the right type of audience list can be the key to success.
FAQs
1. What are audience signals in Performance Max campaigns?
Audience Signals in performance max campaigns can be used to guide Google by suggesting the types of audiences that advertisers want Google to target. It can help efficiently target users who have shown interest, and are more likely to engage with their ads. Google targets audiences beyond audience signals too.
2. How do audience signals differ from traditional audience targeting?
Traditional audience targeting sets hard limits on who the ads could appear for. Google utilizes audience signals to effectively target audiences but also targets audiences it deems fit beyond what is provided in an audience signal.
3. How should I structure audience signals in a Performance Max campaign?
As a pro tip, it is recommended to create different asset groups for each audience signal. Since Google doesn’t provide granular data insights into how each audience signal performs, separate asset groups can help monitor and optimize Pmax campaigns.
4. Can I change audience signals after the campaign has started?
Yes, changing an audience signal once the campaign has begun can contribute to the campaign’s machine learning process. It will optimize the campaign based on the new data added while retaining the old data.
5. Should I use first-party data for audience signals?
Yes, first-party (your data) data like website visitors or customer lists can help Google figure out the kind of users that have interacted with your ads in the past. This can significantly improve the machine learning process and can attribute to increased clicks.
6. What types of audience signals can I add?
You can add first-party data, custom segments, demographic data and interest based audience signals to a performance max campaign.
7. Do audience signals affect the entire campaign lifecycle?
Yes, audience signals are especially important during the start of the campaign. Additionally, they help optimize Google’s machine learning throughout the campaign lifecycle.
8. Can I use competitor names in custom segments for audience signals?
Yes, using competitor names in custom segments can help Google build a look-alike audience. You can also target specific product pages.
9. Is it mandatory to use audience signals in Performance Max campaigns?
No, it is not mandatory to use audience signals in performance max campaigns. However, using them grants several benefits by guiding Google’s algorithm towards preferred audiences efficiently.
10. Can I retarget customers using audience signals?
Yes, you can utilize your data to create audience signals if you wish to retarget customers. It is necessary to know that these will not be hard targets i.e., not all the users in your list will be targeted, only those that Google deems relevant will be targeted.
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