One of the powers of Facebook Ads is their audience targeting. Unfortunately, Google only has interest targeting which has limited depth and is poorly structured.
What’s funny is Google could probably build a better interest targeting engine because their keyword corpus would be a more valuable definition of peoples interests. They could look at keyword search history, and create segmentation based on this.
But since this doesn’t exist, the only way to accomplish this is to do it a hacky way through Google Ads Custom audience segments.
Here’s how to do Google display ads, YouTube ads, and Google discovery ads to people who search specific keyword phrases.
What is a Google Ads Custom Audience Segment
A custom audience segment is a audience you can create for remarketing purposes. The targeting is super robust, and gives you the ability to build audiences of people who search specific keywords, visit specific URLs, or target people who use specific types of apps.
With that said, I’ve found the keyword target custom audience segment to be the most powerful bc the ads actually target people searching those terms, rather than websites which target people who have visited those sites.
Below is the info Google provides on each targeting.
People who searched for any of these terms on Google
Enter search terms your ideal customer is using on Google. Your ads will reach people who search for those and similar terms only on campaigns running on Google properties. On other campaigns, the terms will be used as interests or purchase intentions.
or people who browse websites similar to
Enter website addresses (URLs) that your ideal customer might visit. Your ads will reach people who browse websites similar to the URLs you enter. Note: This doesn’t mean your ads will show on those URLs.
Notice how the disclaimer states “Your ads will reach people who search for those and similar terms only on campaigns running on Google properties.”
Score.
Google Ads Custom Audience Segment for Display Ads
To create a keyword based custom audience segment, go to the following link – https://ads.google.com/aw/audiences/management/customaudience
Then hit the plus sign.
Then click people who search for any of these terms on Google.
And add your high value keywords that have previously made conversions.
Finally, to remarket to this audience select the segment in the audience section of the display ads campaign.
You’re now remarketing to the people who are searching the keywords you know are converting for your brand, even if they haven’t visited your website or clicked an ad.
