Here is how the platform is set to change
Come May 2023, the platform will undergo several changes and target and support a different benchmark audience. The ongoing requirement for improving privacy and ending 3rd party cookies is why Google Ads will no longer support similar audiences. The Google Ads platform aims to increase conversion rates and encourage visitors to explore more eCommerce sites.
What is happening to the platform, and why it makes optimized targeting important?
Google Ads intends to phase out the Similar Audiences targeting option. Therefore, if you have been using the Google Ads platform to target these particular audiences, you will have to change your marketing strategy come 2023. Google will upgrade similar audiences to more robust, automated solutions, such as Optimized Targeting, Audience Expansion, and Smart Bidding, that will help you optimize for your marketing objectives and leverage your first-party data.
Essential Features of Optimized Targeting
Increased audience conversion
Optimized targeting is designed to increase conversion rates. Instead of targeting a similar audience base, you will have to diversify your audience segments and target keywords. Optimized targeting will improve the targeting signals to find similar criteria to serve your ads on your landing page. With optimized targeting, you will find a better-performing target. In addition, it will help reduce the web traffic to your signals. This can increase audience conversions as you can reduce unnecessary alerts and direct only those likely to become customers to your company’s webpage.
Importance of optimized targeting
As changes are being brought about to the Google Ads platform, it has become essential for eCommerce marketing experts to understand the difference between audience expansion and optimized targeting. The original system would target a broad client base, but with optimized targeting, you are expanding to particular audience segments. You manually selected the audience segment and developed the advertising campaign. With optimized targeting, you can increase audience conversions, as this is important to your company and will help create a loyal client base.
Audience insights
Optimized targeting is essential to gain audience insight. When you can target a specific audience base, you can understand the requirements of your audience. Then, to improve your brand value, you can make changes to your marketing campaign and your products and services in the long run.
Thus, the Google Ads platform will help you evaluate conversions on Google Analytics. Create Audiences for clients who have recently converted or spent much time on your website. This will help you target them through Optimize. You can connect Analytics and Optimize for the best results.
Essential Features of Audience Expansion
Capture additional conversions by expanding to relevant audience segments that look like your manually selected audiences. The feature is available for Video campaigns that use the “Product and brand consideration” or “Brand awareness and reach” goal.
Audience expansion can:
– Simplify audience targeting and optimization
– Work across various networks and audience types
– Give you the opportunity to expand your reach
Understanding Smart Bidding
An essential part of the changes introduced to the Google Ads platform is the introduction of ‘Smart Bidding.’ You can opt for it when you create the account on the platform; otherwise, you can also do it when introducing changes to your marketing campaign.
The essential features of Smart Bidding are as follows:
Smart Bidding provides you with flexible performance control. This means you can optimize your search bids and make them data-driven.
Based on your bid strategy reports, you can develop suitable Smart Bidding strategies and understand how these strategies are performing. This is essential to increase conversion rates.
The more evolved and detailed bid strategy statuses will give you a thorough understanding of the performance of the particular advertisement campaign.
Finally, Smart Bidding introduces simulators that forecast how your advertisement campaigns will perform. This will give you a better understanding of the critical metrics, such as cost, conversions, conversion value, impressions, and clicks of the advertisement campaign you want to launch. Smart Bidding is primarily a process that uses machine learning to optimize for conversions or conversion value in every auction. As a result, with Smart Bidding, you can maximize conversions and improve body performance.
When will Google introduce the changes, and how can you manage them?
From May 2023, you can no longer add a similar audience section to your advertisement campaigns. You can use the database till August 2023, but you can no longer add to it from May 2023. This is because, from August 2023, Google will remove similar audience and group segments from the campaigns. You can only access these in the form of historical data.
This means you will have to make several changes to your advertising campaign so your audience can easily access your web pages. Some of the simplest ways that you can ensure that there are no disruptions to the campaign are as follows:
It would help if you started using the ‘Smart Bidding’ option Google offers to ensure that all customer match lists are included automatically.
You will have to build durable and effective audience management strategies. This means your marketing strategies must be audience oriented and should re-evaluate the existing marketing campaign.
Leverage first-party data in audience groups to reach similar audiences without adding it to your existing campaign.
How are the changes going to impact the advertisers?
You will have to undertake several changes to your existing marketing campaigns to incorporate the changes to the Google Ads platform. However, it is bound to benefit advertisers and business owners in the long run. For example, the objective of the changes is to increase conversion rates and create a dedicated customer base. This will only help in improving your company’s brand value. Thus, if you incorporate the changes in the advertising campaign you have developed, as suggested by the platform, it is bound to produce positive results in the future.
What can you do to prepare for these changes?
Need Help with Audience Targeting?
Curious to know which audience options could work for your business? At Sorcery Media Group, we understand that setting up Google audiences isn’t the easiest thing to do for everyone. For further guidance on audiences or how to develop a successful Google Ads strategy, get in touch with us today!
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Written by: Christopher Ulrich, Sorcery Media Group
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