Search marketers must understand a crucial point: their ads and keywords are effective only if the right people see them. Google’s massive reach, encompassing billions of users across its display network and 3.5 billion daily searches, doesn’t guarantee that every online user is a potential customer.

To address this, Google has introduced various solutions over time, such as search remarketing, demographic targeting, and the recent In-Market audiences, all aimed at helping advertisers connect with the most relevant audience online. Now, advertisers will be pleased to learn about Google’s latest additions for targeting the best audiences, discreetly rolled out recently.

The newest Detailed Demographics targeting option allows for campaign targeting based on Education, Marital Status, Homeowner Status, or Parental Status. This new data empowers advertisers to create bid adjustments for specific demographics, exclude certain demographics from ad exposure, or even focus solely on a highly desirable demographic within their search campaigns.

Exploring Google’s New Detailed Demographics

Google’s four new detailed demographic targets are:

Parental Status

Initially introduced for display advertisers in 2014, parental status targeting is now available for search campaigns. Furthermore, there’s enhanced visibility into the age of those parents’ children. This detailed demographic information is invaluable, as searches like “math tutor” or “boy’s coat” can have different meanings for the parent of a 16-year-old compared to the parent of a 6-year-old.

The detailed demographic targets for parental status are:

• Parents of Infants (0-1 years)
• Parents of Toddlers (1-3 years)
• Parents of Preschoolers (4-5 years)
• Parents of Grade schoolers (6 -12 years)
• Parents of Teens (13 – 17 years)

Importantly, Google prohibits directly targeting ads towards minors. However, parents often hold significant decision-making power and purchasing influence over their children. Therefore, targeting parents of younger consumers can be an effective strategy for increasing sales and conversions.

Marital Status

The impact of relationship status on purchasing habits is undeniable. Being in a relationship often means shopping for two and involving a partner in purchase decisions. Google’s detailed demographics targeting now allows advertisers to target users based on their relationship status:

• Single
• In a relationship
• Married

This picture will forever have a place in my blog posts.

Education

Google’s detailed demographics options allow targeting based on both current student status and educational attainment:

• Current College Students
• High School Graduates
• Obtained Bachelor’s Degree
• Obtained Advanced Degree

The $82 billion back-to-school market presents a significant opportunity to leverage these targeting options, particularly for reaching college students. Similarly, higher education institutions can benefit by attracting high school graduates or bachelor’s degree holders to their programs.

Beyond the obvious applications, educational attainment often correlates with other life aspects, serving as an indicator of professional career status, income, and even political affiliation. While Google doesn’t allow direct targeting based on these factors, analyzing performance across these demographics can provide valuable insights.

Furthermore, students are known for their unique search behavior, often using Google as a starting point for research. However, students typically have limited disposable income and may not be the ideal target audience for expensive items or services. Many advertisers could see benefits from excluding current students from their ad targeting.

Homeowner Status

Google’s detailed demographics options also allow targeting based on homeownership:

• Homeowners
• Renters While seemingly straightforward, homeownership comes with a multitude of purchases. From appliances and insurance to home improvement services, the needs of homeowners differ significantly from renters. While landlords might be the target audience for certain home-related products or services, renters are more likely to be interested in experiences and non-home-related purchases.

Utilizing Google’s New Detailed Demographics

Implementing detailed demographics into a search campaign or ad group is straightforward, once you know where to find it. This feature is located within the “Audiences” tab (not demographics, surprisingly) in Google Ads. From there, you can add detailed demographics for Parental Status, Marital Status, Education, and Homeowner Status to search campaigns.

Advertisers have two options: “Target” these audiences exclusively, or add them as an “Observation” audience to analyze their engagement with ads and adjust bids accordingly.

To prevent specific demographic groups from seeing your ads, navigate to the “Exclusions” tab at the top of the page. Here you can select audiences to exclude from your targeting.

Go ahead and explore these new targeting options!