Google Display Network Targeting
The Google Display Network (GDN) will place your display ads against related content and audiences across thousands of sites. It is ideal for raising brand awareness and matching interested people with something they wouldn’t necessarily search for. It’s a growing area in online marketing and one that can create awareness to increase search traffic.
Finding your Audience
Before running a Google Display campaign, one report worth looking at is the Google Analytics Interests Overview. This report helps you to identify the interests of your target audience. Within your Analytics account you can see where users have been categorised by Google depending on the types of websites they visit and on their demonstrated behaviour across the Google Display Network. To view this information:
- Login to your Analytics account
- Select the Audience tab on the left hand side
- Click on Interests and Overview
In this report, there are two groupings to explore. One of ‘in-market segments’ and one of ‘affinity’ categories. These categories match exactly with the audiences that can be targeted through the Display Network within AdWords. Thus, if you see above that a large proportion of your site visitors have interests in a certain area, you can then target that specific audience through the Display Network. See below for information further explaining these audience categories.
In-Market Audience
An In-Market audience is one that is actively researching and considering buying a service or product. If your goal is to attain sales through your display campaign, then this is the audience targeting type to consider. Targeting an in-market audience overlapped with your remarketing list can help to reach relevant customers close to completing a purchase.
There are many advantages of targeting In-Market segments as placements in your Display Campaign:
- Raise awareness among those actively researching and are keen to purchase
- Reach potential customers at the right moment and with the right offer
- Improve campaign ROI by targeting those who are ready to convert
- Get your message to interested customers that have not yet seen your product offering
Affinity Audiences
Targeting Affinity audiences is more like TV advertising, showing ads related to a product that’s likely of interest to the audience of a particular program. Advertising to an affinity audience is good for brand awareness and reach to people with an interest in/browsing certain themes of sites. For example, if you want to launch a new running shoe, you can target people interested in marathon running. Users are categorised depending on their browser history and personal information they’ve submitted online. This provides a platform to connect with an audience with an interest related to your product/brand.
Some advantages of Affinity Audience targeting:
- Increase brand awareness on a larger scale
- Engage with precise audiences
- Reach your target audience early in the funnel
- Reach potential customers by targeting their personalities and needs
Focus in on Converting Visitors
In-Market and Affinity segments in the Analytics Interests report can provide a valuable insight into audiences to target when running a Display campaign. To delve further into each segment and identify the websites that solely converting visitors were associated with:
- Click on All Sessions
- Untick All Sessions and tick Converters
We have now identified the In-Market and Affinity segments that Google has placed your converting visitors in. As you can see above, a considerable portion of this audience is interested in tech/gadgets and they’re actively researching home furnishings. An overlap in display network targeting between this affinity group and this in-market audience could prove conducive to further conversions.
We hope you’ve found this insight into finding and targeting your display network audience useful. Any questions, please comment below or reach us on info@searchscientist.co.uk.
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