Programmatic Ads: Targeting Your Audience
How to define who sees your ads, and how to balance relevance against reach.
Overview
Targeting is how you tell your campaign who you want to reach. Instead of showing your ads to everyone, you describe your ideal audience by their attributes, and your campaign focuses on the people who fit. Getting this right is one of the biggest factors in how well your campaign performs.
This article covers the targeting options available when you build a campaign. You'll set these during the Targeting step. For the full setup walkthrough, see How to Create a Campaign.
How targeting works
You build your audience by choosing from a set of targeting options. You can use just one, or stack several together to narrow in. Each option you add makes your audience more specific. The options available depend on your ad type, so you may not see every choice below for every campaign.
Where your ads appear
Site categories
Available for Display and Video campaigns. Choose the kinds of content where you'd like your ads to show up, such as Arts & Entertainment, Automotive, Finance, Food & Drink, Health & Fitness, News, Sports, Technology, or Travel. Pick as many as you like, or leave it blank to run across all categories.
Streaming channels
Available for Streaming campaigns. Choose the streaming networks you want to target, or leave it blank to run across all available channels.
Block list
If there are specific websites you'd rather avoid, add them to your block list, one domain at a time. This is optional, but it's a simple way to keep your ads away from places that aren't the right fit for your brand. (Not available for Out of Home campaigns.)
Who sees your ads
Device targeting
Choose which devices your campaign should reach: Desktop, Mobile, Tablet, and CTV (Connected TV). All four are on by default, and you'll need to keep at least one selected. (Not available for Out of Home campaigns.)
Location targeting
Decide how wide your reach should be. Choose All to run nationwide across the United States, or Custom to focus on specific states or zip codes. Custom is useful when your product or service is tied to a particular area.
Audience attributes
You can refine your audience further using optional attributes. Each section is collapsible, so you only open the ones you want to use. These include:
- Age range, so you can focus on specific age bands.
- Household income, useful when your product fits a particular price point.
- Occupation, such as white collar, blue collar, or retired.
- Interests and lifestyle, which capture the things people actively engage with, like travel, fitness, or home improvement.
Balancing relevance and reach
Here's the key trade-off to keep in mind: the more targeting options you stack, the more relevant your audience becomes, but the smaller the pool of people your campaign can actually reach.
For example, targeting "homeowners aged 35 to 54 with an interest in home improvement" will reach a sharply defined, highly relevant group. But layer on too many attributes and you may narrow your audience so far that the campaign struggles to deliver. There's no single right answer here. A broad campaign trades precision for scale, and a tight one does the opposite. The best mix depends on your goal, so it's worth starting a little broader and tightening over time if you want more focus.
Once your campaign is running, Understanding Your Metrics will help you see how your targeting is paying off.