In this solo presentation Aaron Young explains that audience targeting in Google Ads must be tailored to the specific campaign type. He visualizes a spectrum where the primary performance driver shifts from keywords/feed for Search and Shopping campaigns, to high‑quality conversion data for Performance Max (PMax), and finally to audiences and creative for Demand Gen (YouTube and Display). While smart bidding (e.g., Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value) applies across all campaign types, the core lever that moves the needle differs. For Search/Shopping, keyword relevance and a strong product feed dominate; for PMax, abundant, high‑quality conversion data is essential before activation; for Demand Gen, audience signals and compelling creative are paramount. Aaron also advises mining audience data from Search, Shopping, and PMax campaigns to build high‑performing Demand Gen audiences, emphasizing that audience targeting remains relevant across all types but must align with each campaign’s primary driver.
Chapters
Let's talk about audience targeting and Google Ads. Now, audience targeting is really important in Google Ads, and it's something that you should focus on. But the one thing I do want you to remember when it comes to audience targeting and Google Ads is it really depends on the type of campaign that you are running. Let me give you a perfect example. So what I wanna do is I quickly wanna draw out audiences and the effect that they have on different types of campaigns. Now, I'm not gonna go into remarketing and retargeting because there are some really, really specific niches where you would do this. I'm just talking about your general Google Ads campaigns. So what I wanna talk about here is that you, over here, you've got your keywords or your feed, and it could be both. You could be doing search targeting and your feed. Here you've got your conversion data or data. And then over here you've got your audiences. And let's also chuck in there your creative. All right. When we talk about the different types of Google Ads campaigns, where do they fall on the spectrum of what is the most important thing to do? What is the most important element that really moves the needle with that type of campaign? Now, obviously it's important to note that when you do layer in things like smart Smart Bidding, Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value. That kind of goes across all of these different types of campaigns we're going to draw out for you. But over on this side of the spectrum, we've got our Search and our Shopping campaigns. Now, am I saying that audiences aren't relevant for Search and Shopping? No, I'm not saying that. And I'm not saying that conversion data isn't relevant. But the main driver that is really, really going to change the performance of your account comes down to your keywords and your shopping feed. Then in the middle here, we have PMax campaigns. And this is an interesting one. And it's the one thing I do want you to remember that at its core, Performance Max, the way that it was created and the way that it's functioned, it was created to generate more conversions. So that's why for me, I don't start Performance Max or we don't use Performance Max unless we've got a lot of conversion data happening in that account that is high quality conversion data. The reason being is because audiences and your keywords and even your feed to a certain extent is gonna come secondary to the conversion data that's happening in your account. And then over this side, we have our demand gen. Let's just call it DGen. Now, when I say demand gen, could also be YouTube and could also be display. And these ones are heavily, heavily focused on your audiences and also your creative, especially if you're dealing in with YouTube, but especially your audiences. And they're the ones where you should really be taking the data. So what does that mean with audience targeting and where does that leave that? And the way that we are really, really using, especially demand gen, is that we're using our Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns, mining all that data to find our highest performing audiences, adding in our custom lists and all those different things to push them into high performing demand gen campaigns. So remember, I'm not saying that you don't need to be thinking about your audience targeting across all of the different types of campaigns when it comes to Google Ads. But what you need to always be thinking about is what are the core drivers of each of these types of campaigns that are really going to be moving the needle when it comes to increasing the performance of your Google Ads campaigns for your business.
