Google widening the audience past the one you chose

Sometimes it is the best thing in the campaign: Google finds people who resemble your converters. What makes it worth a finding is that it is on by default.

So an advertiser who carefully built an audience and one who never thought about it end up in the same place, and the first usually does not know. The careful audience is a starting point, not a limit.

The check reads ad groups in Display, Video and Demand Gen campaigns with the optimized targeting setting.

Checks that weigh money or clicks judge what they find on your own account's numbers, not on one figure applied to every account, so what counts as a problem on a small account is not the same on a large one. Checks on settings read how the account is set up.

When there is too little to go on, the check says so instead of guessing. A finding always comes with the rows behind it, so you can read the evidence before you decide.

1. In Google Ads, open a Display, Video or Demand Gen campaign, then an ad group, then Audiences.
2. Look for Optimized targeting and whether it is on.
3. Repeat for each ad group that spends.
4. Compare results of ad groups with it on and off, if you have both.

Decide per ad group. For prospecting, optimized targeting can find good new people, so leave it on and watch the cost per conversion. For remarketing or a narrow audience you chose on purpose, switch it off so the ads stay with that audience.

Note the choice, so the next person knows it was made on purpose.

• Audience signal
• Demand Gen campaign
• Observation
• Optimized targeting

The checks next to this one in Campaign structure, each with its own page.

• Google is applying its own recommendations
• No audience list on any campaign
• An account big enough to test that has never tested
• No list separating people who already bought
• AI Max is widening what a campaign matches
• Remarketing lists too small to serve