What is audience targeting?

Learn the fundamentals of targeting your ads to specific groups of customers, based on your data or on ours.

Search advertising isn't just about finding the right search queries, it's about finding the right people: your target audience.

With Microsoft Advertising's suite of audience targeting features, you can set up specific criteria for who should see your ad. This means your ad will be shown only to the customers you've determined are more likely to make a purchase. Learn about all of our audience targeting options.

Important

In order to target certain audience types, Microsoft Advertising needs to be able to collect data from your website. This requires Universal Event Tracking (UET). Check the table in this article to see which audience targeting options require UET.

General tips for using audience targeting

  • Combine to refine: Use combinations of multiple audiences and multiple audience types to reach the most qualified customers. Remember that you can associate audiences at both the ad-group and the campaign level.
  • Try different campaign types: Audience targeting works across all campaign types, including Microsoft shopping campaigns, audience campaigns, and dynamic search ad campaigns.
  • Bid on broader search terms: These tend to be highly competitive and expensive keywords, but targeting a finely-tuned audience will help you make sure you're getting a good return on investment.
  • Expand your match types: Running your audience targeting campaigns with broad match may help you achieve better results compared to using exact match and no audience targeting.
  • Capture mobile traffic: Capture more volume by extending campaigns across device types or running mobile-only campaigns.
  • Use ad customizers: With ad customizers, your ads can dynamically update themselves to appeal to the specific audience you're targeting. Learn more about ad customizers.
Important

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