Google advertising promotion, how to position Google display ads?

Everyone knows that Google search ads are directly positioned by keywords, but the positioning of display ads may not be clear. In fact, the latter is indeed more complex and diverse. This article will learn the structure and basic connotations of display ad positioning through the Google AdWords backend positioning options. The main contents include:

1. The basic structure of display ad targeting

2. Targeting by People

3. Targeting by Content

1. The basic structure of display ad targeting

First, once you've created your display campaign, you can create your ad groups.

When creating, there are many positioning methods to choose from. Now let’s list the structures of these positioning methods using a mind map.

In the above picture, there are three layers:

First layer: Target_GDN (GDN stands for Display Network, i.e. display advertising)

The second layer: people and content (the former is based on people-oriented, the latter is based on content-oriented)

The third layer: subdivided categories under the two orientations in the second layer (described in detail later)

That’s the basic structure of display ad targeting, let’s look at the specific categories.

2. Targeting by People

There are two specific types of people-based targeting: Audience and Demographic.

2.1 Audience

There are three types of audience-based targeting, as shown below:

Note the audience-based targeting segments in the image above. They basically mean exactly what they say:

People's interests or habits (what they like, what hobbies they have)

What the group is researching or planning (users’ recent motivations or goals)

How people interact with your site (which pages they view, how long they stay, etc.)

What this means is that as an advertiser, I want to use a people-based targeting approach. How should I do it? I can tell Google what my core audience likes, what goals or tasks they might have to accomplish when buying my product, or if they’ve been on my site but didn’t buy. After I tell Google this information, Google will be able to understand who my core audience might be, and then it can target my ads to that group of people.

In the background, the options corresponding to the above three positioning methods are as follows:

It can be seen that these three dimensions are parallel and exist independently of each other. Here we first understand the general situation of the background, so that you can look at every detail in detail after entering the background.

Next, we will further study the specific positioning concepts in three dimensions.

2.1.1 Affinity Audience + Custom Affinity

Affinity Audience

Suppose I am in the fitness and sports industry, I can choose the sports & fitness option, through which I can target people who are interested in sports or fitness.

In the background, we can see that under the browse option, we can select many interest categories, and we can choose according to our own situation.

Let’s look at custom interests of custom types.

Custom Affinity

Custom affinity means customized interests. Compared with affinity audience, the customization method is more flexible. In the figure below, we can enter interest keywords, URLs, locations and apps for further targeting segmentation. Instead of choosing a fixed category given by the system.

When we use this method to locate, we usually look for related URLs while researching keywords, and try to dig out as many as possible, including those of my products and my competitors.

This is positioning based on interests or habits. Now let’s look at positioning based on motivations or goals.

2.1.2 What the crowd is researching or planning (Intent + Inmarket)

In this type of positioning, it is necessary to understand the two types of segmentation: intent and inmarket.

Intent

Earlier, we have explained the meaning of intent. It represents the user's motivation. For example, if a user searches for "best smartphone 2019" on Google, the user's motivation or goal may be to buy a high-quality mobile phone. After knowing the user's intention, the Google advertising system can push ads that have been set up based on intent to the user.

In the background, the corresponding page is as shown below. First, we can choose the automatic type of targeting method, that is, let the Google advertising system automatically target those people who have a demand for our products or services (with obvious motivations). Secondly, we can choose manual customization - custom intent audience.

What is Custom intent audience? From the purpose of use and operation method (as shown below), we need to enter Keywords, URLs, Apps, etc. to let Google understand our ideal users and push ads to those who are researching related products or services. We can understand this in conjunction with the custom affinity mentioned earlier.

In the background targeting options, there are corresponding tools to operate Custom intent audience. Here, you can also enter relevant keywords and URLs. The function principle is similar to Custom affinity.

Next, let’s look at in-market.

In-market

In-market has the same meaning as intent and is also in the intent category. So what is the difference between in market and custom intent audience?

From the perspective of the described audience types, there is no difference. They are all positioned at people who are researching specific products or services and have a strong desire to buy. However, from the perspective of setting operations, customization is obviously more flexible, and keywords and specific URLs can be added.

Let’s continue looking at the interaction.

2.1.3 How people interact with your website (Interaction)

Let’s assume here that the goal of my campaign is to drive traffic to the website. In this case, there are two specific targeting methods: Remarketing and Similiar audience.

The key to this type of targeting is data source: there needs to be data on previous interactions with your site so that Google can understand your target users.

It mainly includes two types: remarketing and similiar audience.

Remarketing

What is remarking? Suppose I know the information of users who visited my website before, and some of them did not convert or purchase my products or services. I can use remarketing targeting to let Google push ads to this group of people again for multiple marketing.

Similiar audience

What is Lookalike Audience Targeting? Suppose I know the interaction information left by users who visited my website before, then I can use this information (uploaded to Google Adwords) to target similar users. The difference between it and Remarketing is that here I am targeting new users rather than users who have already visited the website.

The Similiar audience of the background corresponding page ranks first, which is obviously a very important positioning direction.

I don’t know if you have noticed the correlation between remarketing and similar audiences. For users who have browsed our website in the past period of time, they can be divided into two parts. One part is conversion, such as purchasing products, and the other part is those who did not place an order. They may have looked at the website and left for many reasons. Remarketing is aimed at the latter. Although these people have left, I can still push advertisements to them. That’s actually why I also see items I browsed last week on my blog.

In addition, similar audiences are actually complementary to remarketing. I can’t rely solely on remarketing to old users to achieve growth. I also need to develop new customers, so I have to consider similar audiences. Based on the original user data, I then looked for users with similar characteristics.

Therefore, this forms a closed loop. I can do hot marketing to old users and attract new users. Then the new users accumulate and become old users, which can be used as new data for my positioning. Therefore, this kind of positioning method generally becomes more and more accurate, and the advertising effect gets better and better in the long run.

The above is the direction of audience positioning, and now let’s look at demographics.

2.2 Demographics

I couldn't remember this word for a while, but after I looked it up on Wikipedia, I never forgot it. The wiki says: Demo means people, and graphic means description. So the meaning of Demographics is the description of people.

Specifically, the information contained in the description here actually corresponds to the background information, including age, gender, marital status, and family income.

This picture is very intuitive, so there are no unfamiliar concepts and we can just take a quick glance at it.

The above is about people-based targeting. It can be found that the audience-based targeting type is what we need to pay special attention to, including interest-based affinity, motivation-based intent, and targeting based on people who have already interacted with the website.

Now let’s look at the second major positioning method – content-based targeting.

3. Targeting by Content

Content-based targeting is aimed at finding the location where our ads will be displayed.

This part mainly includes three subcategories: keyword, topic and placement.

3.1 Keywords

Select websites related to our products or services by entering relevant content keywords. As long as users appear on these websites, they can see my ads.

In addition, we need to pay attention to hybrid positioning here. In this positioning method, I can also position based on audience.

This means that I can have my ads appear on web pages that match my keywords, and I can also have Google push them directly to people who are closely associated with these keywords.

3.2 Topic

In addition to entering keywords, you can also select related topics for targeting.

In its description of topic-based targeting, Google says that topics are based on industries or interests.

Do you think this sentence is strange? How do industries or interests come together? How can we say that the theme is based on both?

I think this is quite interesting? Here’s my own opinion:

Industry is the supply side, and interest is the demand side. Everyone is interested, and when interest grows to a certain scale, a new market or industry is formed.

Topic is a neutral word. It has nothing to do with people. You can use topic to describe the demand of C-end or the supply of B-end.

3.3 placement

The placement positioning method directly allows us to choose the placement location, including Google Display Network and YouTube, and is also divided into mobile and desktop.

In terms of operation, we can search by entering keywords, or when you know the URL of a specific website, you can enter it directly. If the website has a corresponding APP, Google can also display it in the APP.

At this point, we have basically completed the targeting selection for the ad.

But Google also has a tool to expand our advertising coverage - Google's automatic targeting system.

This tool will find more target groups that Google believes meet our targeting methods based on our targeting settings, thereby increasing clicks and conversions.

Here we can see a green sliding adjuster. The further to the right, the wider the audience reached, but the lower the accuracy.

That’s all for today’s content on display ad targeting.

Finally, let’s summarize. Today we learned about the structure of Google display ad targeting and understood two major targeting methods. We found that among people-based targeting, audience-based targeting is very important. It includes targeting based on interests and motivations, as well as targeting to people who have interacted before, or to people who are similar to them.

In the second category of targeting, that is, content-based targeting, Topic-based targeting is very important. This targeting method can be understood from two dimensions: interest and industry. Secondly, special attention should be paid to placement-based positioning methods, among which mobile-based targeting and YouTube-based targeting are both worth studying.

Finally, a complete framework diagram showing the advertising structure is attached.

Related reading:

1. Where is Google advertising promotion displayed and in what form?

2. How effective is Google’s advertising promotion?

3. How does Google Ads charge, promotion prices, advertising costs!

4. How to open a Google Ads account? | Google Ads Agency

5. Google advertising, promotion account opening, marketing platform | Google advertising agency