Google Launches Custom Affinity Audiences For Display Ad Targeting

Today, Google announced it is rolling out custom affinity audiences aimed at giving advertisers more flexibility in their targeting users based on their interests across the Google Display Network.

Google launched affinity audience segments last year to allow advertisers to target users based their interests as reflected by their search and site behavior. The affinity segments reflect TV audience targeting.  Custom affinity audiences still leverage Google’s interest data, but advertisers can create their own segments based on that data rather than selecting from a pre-defined set of audiences.

Until now, advertisers had to work directly with a Google rep if they wanted to create a custom segment. Over the next several weeks, all advertisers will be able to build custom affinity audiences themselves in AdWords.

As an example, Electronic Arts used custom affinity audiences for their Madden GIFERATOR campaign. Rather than simply relying on Google’s football fan affinity segment, EA created separate custom affinity audiences to target fans of each of the 32 NFL teams.

“Custom affinity audiences has allowed us to broaden Madden’s reach with tailored real-time content while maintaining strong engagement,” Alexis Cox, senior product manager at EA told Google.

When setting up custom affinity audiences in AdWords, advertisers can mix interest segments along with sites related to those interests. Google provides reach estimates broken down by demographics and top interests.

And in case you’ve forgotten about the Google Display Network’s position in the market with all the Facebook Atlas news, Google reminds us that according to comScore’s August 2014 figures, the GDN reaches 94 percent of the web in the United States on a monthly basis, and 89 percent of global internet users.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.