If you’ve been managing Google Ads campaigns for a few years, you’ve witnessed a dramatic shift. We used to live in a world governed by keywords. Exact match meant what it said, every search query was visible, and campaign success was often built inside a spreadsheet.

That era is over. While it’s easy to be nostalgic for the old days of granular control, the platform has evolved. To succeed today, our strategies must evolve too.

Keywords Are Now Suggestions, Not Commands
Think of a keyword today as a hint you give to Google’s powerful algorithm, not a strict rule. It’s a starting point that the system can use, expand upon, or even disregard in favour of other signals.

This is why a broad match keyword can trigger your ad on a tangentially related search, or why even your most carefully selected audience signals can feel like they’re being ignored by a Performance Max campaign.

This change can be frustrating. Marketers often feel they have less direct control and transparency than ever before. But this shift doesn’t mean the tools are broken. In fact, those who adapt to this new reality are finding opportunities that their competitors, stuck in an old way of thinking, are missing entirely.

The key is to move from a keyword-centric mindset to one that embraces audience signals and user intent. Keywords are now just one part of a much larger, more dynamic targeting system.

The Four Pillars of Modern Audience Targeting

In today’s Google Ads, effective audience targeting isn’t just a “nice to have”; it’s the core of a successful campaign. With keywords becoming more abstract, audiences provide the necessary direction and focus. A robust strategy is typically built on four pillars: leveraging Google’s data, using your own data, building custom segments, and embracing automation.

Let’s explore the first two, which form the foundation of any modern targeting approach.

Using Google’s Built-in Audience Segments

Google provides a vast library of ready-made audiences built from its extensive user data. These are simple to activate and offer significant scale.

• Detailed Demographics: Move beyond the basics. You can target users based on life details like parental status, level of education, or homeownership.
• Affinity Segments: These segments group users by their long-term passions and hobbies. Whether your target market is into classic films, sustainable living, or marathon running, there is likely an affinity segment available.
• In-Market Segments: Perhaps the most valuable for direct response, these audiences contain users who are actively researching and close to making a purchase in a specific category.
• Life Events: Target individuals going through significant life changes, such as starting a new business, retiring, or recently moving. These moments often create new needs and purchase behaviours.

Leveraging Your Own First-Party Data

As the digital world moves away from third-party cookies, your own data becomes your most valuable asset. These audiences, built from your direct interactions with customers, are incredibly powerful.

• Website Visitors: This is classic remarketing. You can create lists of users who visited specific pages, watched a video, or abandoned a shopping cart. These are easily created through tools like Google Tag Manager or GA4.
• App Users: If you have a mobile app, you can segment your audience based on their in-app behaviour, such as free vs. premium users or those who have completed a key action.
• Customer Lists: By securely uploading data from your CRM (like email addresses), you can directly target existing customers. This is highly effective for upselling, creating lookalike audiences, or excluding them from top-of-funnel campaigns.
• Google Content Engagers: This is a fantastic tool, especially for newer businesses. Google can automatically create an audience of people who have interacted with your brand on any Google property (including Search, Maps, or YouTube). Best of all, it works without needing any tracking tags on your site.

Remember, these lists are just as powerful for exclusions. You can prevent wasting ad spend by excluding your employees, existing customers, or known low-value leads.

Building Custom Segments for Pinpoint Accuracy

When pre-defined audiences don’t fit your needs, custom segments allow you to build your own with precision. Here, you define your audience based on their actual online behaviours.

You can create a custom segment using a combination of signals:

• Specific terms they have searched for on Google.
• Their general browsing interests and patterns.
• The specific types of websites they frequent.
• The kinds of mobile apps they have installed.

This allows you to capture user intent that standard keywords might miss. For instance, a company selling high-quality home coffee brewing equipment could build a custom segment of users who search for “single-origin coffee beans,” visit popular coffee blogs, and use café discovery apps.

These segments are especially powerful in Display, Video, and Demand Gen campaigns, where context and user interest are paramount.

The Foundational Mistake: A Vague Offer and Audience

Before a single penny is spent on ads, many campaigns are already set up to fail. The most common reason? The advertiser hasn’t taken the time to clearly and specifically define what they are selling and who they are selling it to.

It sounds elementary, but it’s an oversight that happens all the time.

• What is your specific offer?
  Don’t think in broad categories. You don’t sell “project management software”; you sell “project management software for small creative agencies.” You don’t offer “building services”; you offer “specialist historical building restoration in the Cotswolds.” Clarity is power.
• Who is your specific audience?
  Understand their context and motivation. An in-house marketing manager at a large corporation has very different needs and pain points than a freelance designer, even if they use similar search terms.

Once you have defined these distinct audience profiles, each one deserves its own tailored campaign with unique targeting, creative, and messaging. Trying to appeal to everyone with a single, generic ad is a recipe for poor performance.

Thinking Laterally: Reaching Niche Audiences Creatively

What happens when you can’t target your ideal customer directly? This is a common challenge for those in niche markets or sensitive categories where direct targeting options are restricted.

The solution is to think laterally. Instead of trying for a direct match, ask yourself: what are the proxy signals for my audience? What else do they do, read, or buy? What are their overlapping interests?

Imagine you’re marketing a new line of premium, eco-friendly baby products. You can’t directly target “new parents who care about sustainability.” So, you think sideways:

You target people with an affinity for sustainable fashion brands.

You create a custom segment of users who visit websites about organic living and non-toxic home products.

You layer in targeting for users of baby milestone tracking apps.

This approach is both smart and effective. It becomes even more potent when your ad creative acts as a final filter. An ad that prominently features sustainable materials and eco-certifications will naturally attract the right audience and cause the wrong audience to scroll by, further refining your targeting without any extra cost.

Final Thoughts

As Google’s platforms become more automated and keyword precision fades, your ability to strategically target audiences is your greatest advantage.

The goal is not to fight the machine, but to feed it better information. When you define your offer, understand your audience, and use creative targeting strategies, you provide the clear signals the algorithm needs to find your customers. In today’s advertising landscape, the clarity of your input determines the quality of your output.