Affinity audiences coming to Google Search campaigns

Google announced Wednesday that it will be rolling out the two new audience targeting options for advertisers over the coming weeks.

Afiinity audiences. These interest audiences have been available for Google Display Network and Video campaigns for years. The audiences are built around interests determined by browsing behavior. Advertisers can drill into broad interest areas like Banking & Finance and Food & Dining to select audiences. Cooking Enthusiasts, Do-It-Yourselfers, Technophiles are some examples of the affinity audiences available.

As with other audiences in Google Ads, you’ll be able to target these audiences or simply observe how they perform in your campaigns.

In-market seasonal event segments. Google brought in-market audiences to Search in 2017. Audiences are built based on buyer intent signals such as recent search queries and browsing activity. Now, ahead of the holiday shopping season, Google is adding in-market seasonal segments such as Black Friday and Christmas to Search and YouTube.

While you’re not going to want to target everyone in-market for Christmas gifts, you can layer this segment on top of your other targeting to reach Christmas shoppers looking for or interested in the kinds of products you sell.

In May, Google announced it had added more in-market categories such as beauty, sports, education and real estate, including 30 retail categories.

Why we should care. These options can be used to help expand your prospecting campaigns to reach people based on their search and browsing signals rather than just specific query intent signals that you’re already targeting with keywords.

Affinity audiences tend to be used for higher-funnel awareness campaigns while in-market are aimed at helping you reach people deemed to be lower in the funnel and preparing to make a purchase.