For the past couple of years, marketers and brands have been able to use an AdWords feature called ‘affinity’ to help better target their desired audience. You could choose the ‘type of people’ that would be most interested in your products, and have them see your ads the most. The example that is most frequently used regarding the affinity feature is for auto manufacturers. If they are launching a brand new vehicle, they can use affinity to display their ads only to automobile enthusiasts. All of this was done automatically when marketers or brands choose to enable affinity on their campaigns.
New Custom Affinity Audiences
To help take this a step further, Google will be rolling an expansion to this feature over the next two weeks. They are calling it ‘custom affinity audiences, and it will give you the ability to choose the exact audience you are interested in. In addition, you can pick which types of screens (PC, tablet, mobile, ect) you want the ads displayed in.
The program takes information they have gathered about potential audiences, and groups them anonymously by their interests and passions. You can then take advantage of those groupings by choosing those who are most valuable to your brand. There are, of course, thousands of different affinity audiences available to choose from.
You can target, for example, fans of specific professional or college sports teams. You could also focus on those who like a specific band, television show, or even a competing brand. The options are nearly endless, and the fact that Google will now allow you to choose exactly which of these audiences you will be targeting could be a very powerful feature.
Available Across the Display Network
As this feature rolls out, it will be available throughout the Google Display Network, which is viewed by 89% of global internet users, and 94% of US users. This will instantly provide marketers with the ability to precisely target a massive audience of potential customers better than ever before.
