to move away from Google Ads similar audience segment //

Google’s similar audiences or segments will be removed in all ad groups, campaigns and ads starting Aug. 1, 2023.

These audiences perform well in all types of campaigns, so marketers and brands should have a plan to replace these golden audiences.

What are the similar audiences?

Google Ads creates similar segments, also known as similar audiences. These audiences are automatically created when your original list meets certain criteria such as size or recency.

This automatic audience is created by Google Ads using machine learning. It will analyze your list and determine the similarities with other Google users.

• Recent search behavior.
• Websites visited.
• Frequented subjects

A similar audience segment is automatically created if there is enough statistically significant similarity with new users.

These new audiences can be generated from YouTube users or website tags.

First-party data such as customer lists can be used to create a similar audience segment. This can help drive performance for new customers in Google Ads.

The audience segment contains other users with similar behavior to those who purchase from you.

According to Google, you can get 41% more conversions if you combine similar segments with display ads campaigns.

What is the reason for similar audiences leaving?

Due to the gradual elimination of third-party cookies, and the need to protect user privacy, Google announced that they would be removing similar audiences in November 2022.

Google believed that the industry is constantly changing and uncertain, so a longer-lasting solution was needed.

They claim that optimized targeting and audience expansion are privacy-centric, and will continue to enable advertisers to reach their targeted audiences.

Similar audiences can produce amazing performances depending on their quality. You will need a strategy to replace them when they cease working in August 2023 and at least four weeks of learnings before you make the transition.

How to prepare for the elimination of similar audiences segments

Step 1: Take stock of similar audiences being used

You can filter your campaigns using the Audience Manager from the Shared library.

Similar audiences can be used across YouTube and Discovery and Display campaigns as well as Search and Shopping. You should also check the audience signals for Performance Max campaigns.

This inventory sheet can be used to conduct an audit of similar audiences.

Once you have completed the survey, you can determine the best strategy to transition away from similar audiences and maintain the same or better performance.

Step 2: Move to value-based tracking and use smart bidding to increase Google’s quality signals

Smart bidding can be a great way to improve your campaign performance, even if you don’t have similar audiences.

These bidding strategies make use of Google’s machine-learning across every ad auction in order to optimize for conversions.

Smart bidding is the best way to get observable data. It has been proven to drive results across all types of campaigns.

Value-based tracking takes it one step further by indicating what is most important. Google’s targeting algorithms and bidding tools can be helped by adding values to individual conversions. This will help improve your performance.

Step 3: Optimize your targeting by using customer match

Unless you opt out, customer matching lists will now be included as a signal for smart bidding such as target CPA and target ROAS and maximize conversions.

To help you with performance bidding and to drive optimized targeting, upload your high-quality customer matching data. This is especially useful if you have removed similar audiences.

Step 4: Based on your data insights, test new segments of audience

Create custom segments for Searchers who have searched for these terms on Google. One for brand search terms, and one for non-branded search terms.

Next, visit You data insights for high-indexing affinity and in-market segments. These insights can be used to create new audiences and test different indexing scores.

These audiences can be used to test against similar audiences. These audiences can be combined on an ad group basis and measured for performance after approximately two to four weeks.

Step 5: Optimize your targeting to increase reach and consideration, as well as performance.

Google recommends optimized targeting for similar audiences in Display, Discovery and Video actions campaigns.

Optimized targeting can be toggled across all your ad group with similar audience segments before you start toggling it on. However, this feature is best for first-party audiences.

It is a good practice to add your first-party data (such as customer match lists) slowly, allowing for enough time to measure results and optimize targeting.

Step 6: Request access the beta to turn off demographics expansion

Google will ignore demographic exclusions if you use video actions campaigns with optimized targeting.

A representative from Google Support said:

“We have demographics expansion for optimized targeting in Video Action Campaigns. The ads with enabled optimized targeting can be served to users not within the targeted demographics (demographics exclusion), provided that the system determines that the user being shown the ad has a strong or high-converting signal (i.e. past search history, relevant video views, etc).“

Requesting to be whitelisted in order to stop the demographics expansion is the best way to eliminate ad serving to excluded demographics. Contact your Google representative to learn more.

Step 7: Transform your website audience to GA4 as soon as possible

Google Analytics4 offers privacy features and audience tracking capabilities to help you keep up with changes in privacy and third-party cookies removal.

GA4 provides companies with tools and features to help them comply with GDPR. GA4, for example, will automatically anonymize all IP addresses of website visitors.

Remarketing audiences that are still producing from Universal Analytics can be re-created in GA4 and enabled in Google Ads.

Your GA4 account must be linked and activated in Google Ads to transition to GA4 audiences.

Second, ensure that Google Signals data collection is enabled. Third, confirm that the User Data Collection Acknowledgement has been confirmed by going to Data Settings > under the GA4 Administration tab.

Google Ads privacy-focused audience targeting: Get used to it

Although it was disappointing to learn of the elimination of similar audience segments from Google Ads, we hope this guide will help us maintain and improve our performance on Google Ads.

As they have always been, the times are changing in this sector. You can stay ahead of the curve by creating a plan for this constantly changing privacy landscape.

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