Audience signal

At the start, Performance Max knows little about your customers. An audience signal gives it a head start: your customer lists, site visitors and the interests of people who buy.

It is a hint, not a fence. Google may show ads to people outside the signal when it expects them to convert, so the signal speeds learning rather than narrowing reach.

1. Open a Performance Max campaign, then Asset groups, then a group, then Signals.
2. Add or edit an audience signal with your data segments, custom segments, interests and demographics.
3. Add search themes in the same place, which describe what people search for.
4. Review the audience insights report to see which segments convert.

A language school adds its past students list, its site visitors, and a custom segment of people searching for language exams as the audience signal. The campaign finds converting students faster than with no signal.

• Expecting the signal to limit who sees the ads.
• Adding only broad interests that describe almost everyone.
• Forgetting your own first-party lists, which are the strongest signal.

The audit checks Oppy runs on this, each with its own page.

• Asset groups with no search theme
• No audience list on any campaign
• Google widening the audience past the one you chose

• Asset group: The building block of a Performance Max campaign: the headlines, descriptions, images, videos and signals Google uses to build ads for every channel.
• Search theme: A phrase you give a Performance Max asset group to say what it is for, in words.
• Remarketing: Showing ads to people who visited your site or used your app before.
• Optimized targeting: A setting on audience-based campaigns that lets Google show ads beyond the audiences you chose, to people it predicts will convert.