Eva gives a quick introduction to useful, high-converting audiences and how they prevent wasted spend, she explains how businesses of any size can use remarketing to leverage high quality site content, increasing return traffic and cementing brand awareness. Next, she takes an in-depth look at why, when and how to build Custom Affinity audiences, taking targeting decisions away from Google and putting it back in the hands of the advertiser for maximum ROI.

2. AWESOME
AUDIENCES

3. Hi! Who am I?
BRAND
MANAGER
Fountain
PPC
Display
ACCOUNT
MANAGEMENT
HE
EVA

4. The Google Display Network

5. Be vigilant for nuanced settings designed to
increase campaign reach whether
it’s relevant to your goals or not.
Wasted spend
is Google’s friend

6. Awareness
Goals
Conversion
Goals
Consideration
Goals

7. AFFINITY SIMILAR GDLC*
INTENT/
IN-MARKET
REMARK
ETING
AWARENESS GOALS CONVERSION GOALS
Display Audiences
+ LOCATION+ DEMOGRAPHIC + INCOME (US)
+DEVICE+PLACEMENT +KEYWORD

8. REMARKETING
ALL USERS
1% of articles generate 75% of social shares
https://backlinko.com/content-study
AWESOME AUDIENCE 1

9. REMARKETING
ALL USERS
CONSIDERATION
GOALS
• Increase
high-converting
return traffic
• Increase the LTV
of existing customers
by staying front of mind
• Get your best content seen
Content Campaigns
• Scalable according
to budget

10. The Smorgasbord!
AD
AD
AD
AD
AD
AD

11. ARTICLE + AD + PAGE AUDIENCE
• Widen appeal: User interest dictates entry point
• Increase impressions with more ad groups
• Showcase expertise across multiple capabilities
• Once 100 users per audience is reached, users stop
seeing ads for content they’ve already viewed

12. Important Considerations:
• Exclude “games” under content exclusions
• Set to “rotate indefinitely” ad rotation
• Time your content well and get monster CTRs!

13. It’s a trap!
“Recommended” Settings
Err… no.
Retain control over who you are targeting
and disable audience expansion when
creating remarketing campaigns.

14. It’s a trap!
eCPC
A great bid strategy for automated
optimisation…. But not in this
context.
Use manual CPC. eCPC will
override the “rotate indefinitely”
setting, defeating the point of the
campaign.

15. Awareness
Goals

16. AFFINITY SIMILAR GDLC*
INTENT/
IN-MARKET
REMARK
ETING
AWARENESS GOALS CONVERSION GOALS
Display Audiences
+ LOCATION+ DEMOGRAPHIC + INCOME (US)
+DEVICE+PLACEMENT +KEYWORD

17. CUSTOM AFFINITY
For when Google’s own definitions don’t quite cut it
AWESOME AUDIENCE 2

18. So what?
Where does a persona
intersect with platform
targeting capabilities?

22. INTEREST
KEYWORDS
INTEREST
URLS
ACTION
URLS
COMPETITOR
KEYWORDS
COMPETITOR
URLS
Use personas to infer behaviour…

25. Why test?
Why not just
let it run?
Continual optimisation =
Continual improvement
You can’t tell what
signals are taking
precedence unless you
engineer comparison
Efficiency: Faster to
implement than testing
creative when you can’t
edit in-house.

26. AD
GROUP
A
AD
GROUP
C
AD
GROUP
B
AUDIENCE 1 AUDIENCE 2 AUDIENCE 3

27. B 1
A 2
C 3
C 1
A 1
B 2
A 3
C 2
B 3

28. IMPORTANT
CONSIDERATIONS
Custom affinity requires 3 weeks to complete “learning” phase, so adding and
assessing audiences should be a monthly task.
Log audience definitions in a spreadsheet alongside results so you can spot
trends in what signals work best for that client + sector to inform future
campaigns.
This type of testing will always result in campaigns being “limited by spend”.
That’s ok!
I would recommend sticking with manual CPC for clicks goal campaign, but test
other bid strategies via experiments if you use this for conversion goals.
Don’t just look at CTR to analyse performance, look at it alongside behaviour.

29. It’s a trap!
Users from India who
Like The Queen and/or
Manchester United
No, seriously. Avoid the “recommended
setting” - “people in, or interested in
your target location”

30. Recap!
Content Remarketing using the all users list – known quantities more
likely to convert. Take advantage of cheap clicks to get your knowledge
seen and stay front of mind with potential converters.
Custom Affinity lets you retain control over how audiences are defined
letting you incrementally improve campaign performance.
Be aware of traps in campaign set-up! Google thinks it’s helping you
reach MORE users, when what you want is to focus your media spend on
MORE BETTER users.

31. Thanks!