Lookalike audiences have been a valuable tool for expanding prospecting efforts and improving the scale and quality of Google Ads campaigns, and will be gone starting August 1st.
The good news is that the impact will likely be manageable.
Here are alternatives and new strategies to maintain your PPC targeting capabilities.
Google-recommended strategies for effective audience targeting
Providing high-quality data and signals to Google Ads is key to maintaining effective audience targeting even without lookalike audiences.
This ensures that the various automation, machine learning and algorithmic processes at play are sufficient right information to head in the desired direction.
For search + shopping campaigns
Increase the way you take advantage of Smart Bidding by providing your own high-quality data.
You can do this using customer match lists, which can be uploaded directly to Google Ads in Audience Manager.
Smart Bidding Strategies will automatically use this proprietary data to proactively search for valuable customers and prospects using Google Automation.
For display, discovery and video campaigns (Google Ads + Display and Video 360)
Let’s say you have lookalike audiences applied to these campaign types as of August 1st. In this case, the use of optimized targeting will be automatically activated, which is not surprising that Google’s rec is with this.
Optimized targeting is a broader strategy than lookalike audiences. Instead of building personas from advertiser-provided seed lists, it uses real-time conversion data to build personas from people who are deemed most likely to convert.
Optimized targeting will use your data (content targeting, selected audience segments, etc.) as a starting point. It will also expand your search for qualified users beyond these limits.
Advertisers using Optimized Targeting in their Display and Video 360 campaigns see a 55% improvement over specified campaign goals when using proprietary data and a 25% improvement when using Google Audiences, according to Google.
For video campaigns (reach or consideration)
On August 1st, all video campaigns in this group will automatically turn on audience expansion. This strategy is probably more like lookalike audiences in terms of how it works.
Google will take the selected audience segments you apply and expand your targeting to include segments of various types (eg, custom segments, market segments) that are similar to the ones you’ve specifically chosen.
Consider lookalike audiences that don’t use your own data as your initial list.
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What else can I do outside of what Google recommends?
Beyond Google’s recommendations, here are strategies you can try to make sure you don’t miss any traffic or targeting opportunities after August 1st.
Add and test custom segments in your accounts
I’ve seen this strategy used in a couple of different ways that could be useful in this situation.
Option 1: Create a custom keyword-based segmentation that contains your account’s top-performing search queries: one for brand and one for relevant non-brand categories.
Collect this data by:
Performing search query analysis on your existing search campaigns. Compilation of keyword lists for terms with: Highest conversion volume. Cost per acquisition more efficient. Higher conversion value. And/or any other key performance indicators that are important to you.
Once these lists are created, you can apply them to your campaign types to reach users who:
Search for included terms and similar terms. Show interest or purchase intent related to them.
Option 2: Create custom URL-based targeting using your competitors’ websites.
Collaborate with your client, internal team, etc. to identify your closest competitors and create a custom segment using the “people browsing similar websites to” option.
This will tell Google that you want to reach people like those who browse your competitors’ sites.
Talk about feeding two birds with one scone. Get pseudo lookalike audience segmentation i visibility to your competitors’ potential customers.
Smart Bidding and its machine learning capabilities
These can be extremely powerful tools when used strategically.
I’ve seen success here mostly by adding conversion values and using offline conversion import.
Adding conversion values to existing conversion actions in your Google Ads accounts can help expand your targeting to include higher value users.
When you add values to your conversion actions, you’re effectively telling Smart Bidding Automation, “This is the priority I place on each of these action types.”
When you add these values and use a “Maximize conversion value” smart bid strategy, automation will use real-time conversion data to find new users who are more likely to convert with your conversion actions of higher value (higher priority).
Basically, it uses the same logic as similar audiences, which is “find me more people who exhibit behavior similar to these traits.”
But in this case, the defined traits are conversion actions rather than advertiser-defined start lists.
Trying to import offline conversions is a worthwhile strategy.
Offline conversion import, in a nutshell, is taking the data your business gets after a PPC conversion action and sharing it back to Google Ads through a feedback loop.
This gives advertisers deeper visibility into which targeting tactics are actually driving bottom-line performance rather than just top-line conversions.
It has the added benefit of providing the highest quality signal to the smart bidding/machine learning algorithm.
To get the most out of offline conversion import in terms of disappearing lookalike audiences, you should use it in conjunction with Smart Bidding strategies as your primary conversion action.
This will train the system to find and optimize for those high-quality offline conversion actions, ultimately finding new users who behave more like your existing customers.
Provide high quality signals to Google
Google’s move to capture similar audiences is consistent with its goal to focus more on user privacy.
Will it change the way we can search for new users? Yes.
Can we still deliver high quality signals and targeted targeting in Google Ads to maintain and continue to improve results for our businesses and clients? Absolutely.
While we’re seeing a lot of Google Ads features working, that doesn’t mean we’re running out of tools. It just means we have to find new or different ways to use the ones we have.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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