Google Announces That The Similar Audiences Will Stop

As you know, the ongoing focus on consumer privacy has resulted in different Google Ads updates, affecting similar audiences targeting. So this week, Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin referred that Google will phase out the similar audiences targeting in 2023. Please read on to understand the influence and how to prepare for these changes.

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No New Similar Audience Segments Available Starting May 2023

If you are using the similar audiences in the campaigns or ad groups, there won’t be a change or an effect on them. 

While you can still use the same audience segments until August 2023, you won’t add the new similar audience segments to the campaigns and groups. 

Similar Audiences To Be Completely Removed In August 2023

The second part of sunsetting the similar audiences will occur in August 2023. Google will delete any existing audience segments from all ad groups or campaigns.

Don’t worry. Advertisers will still have access to historical reporting for all segments if they need to.

Why The Change?

Google announces that the audience change is considered  a result of the following:

• Evolution of the online marketing approaches
• Privacy-preserving alternatives developing

This is a change from Google’s original stance back in 2021. After initially declaring they would not supply an alternative to the third-party cookies, quick feedback from advertisers could help change the landscape. 

Google stated that different forms of user targeting are important for advertisers to effectively market products or services. 

Advertisers will move away from Google without an effective alternative. This will also affect Google’s advertising revenue. Talking about the similar viewers specifically, this change will convey them into a more automated targeting solution.

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Ginny Marvin supplied more context to the audience transition in the Twitter thread:

With this change, Google also offered advertisers a preparation guide focused on the campaign type: 

Search and Regular Shopping Campaigns

Display, Discovery, and Video action campaigns

Video awareness campaigns

How Much Does This Impact Advertisers?

While the similar audiences seem to beentirely disappearing, that is not exactly the case. 

Fellow PPCers on Twitter were quick to participate, asking for more clarity on how (or if) Google will merge similar audiences with different targeting options:

• Existing added audience lists
• Signals from first-party customer match lists to reach existing and new customers.s

So, while the similar audience targeting wouldn’t be available as a standalone option, more automated targeting or bidding solutions use  similar signals, skipping the need for the same audience feature. 

Marvin confirmed that Smart Bidding considered all of these signals:

• Existing added the audience lists
• Signals from the first-party customer match list to approach existing or new customers 

Summary

Will the similar audiences transition make a huge impact on existing campaigns? As of right now, it is likely not but it is good for all advertisers to know and understand what is changing, why it is changing and what alternatives are appearing.

EverRanks shows that The Google support guide is a perfect way to better understand each campaign complexities or how to prepare the different campaign types for this 2023 convey.

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