PAID SEARCH | A Complete Guide to PPC Ad Targeting Options

Article by Michelle Morgan

Here's a walk through of ad targeting options for search, display, and remarketing campaigns and how they can be used to engage with potential customers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Search Targeting

Display Targeting

Contextual Targeting

Audience Targeting

Remarketing

Demographics

In the world of pay-per-click advertising, there are many different targeting options available, each designed to create a unique way for advertisers to reach their target audience.

Through platforms like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and others, we’re able to serve targeted messages to users based on:

Their search behavior.
Content they’re viewing.
Behaviors they’ve exhibited.
And more.

In this chapter, we’ll go through each of the targeting options for Search, Display, and Remarketing campaigns and how they can be used to engage with our potential customers.

Let’s get started with the most common targeting: Search.

Search Targeting

Search campaigns are a powerful strategy for marketers, allowing you to reach users when they are actively searching for information.

By showing an ad on a search engine results page (SERP), you’re in a position to answer the user’s query and potentially influence them to make a purchase.

So how do you show up on these SERPs?

By bidding on keywords.

Keywords

Keywords are phrases advertisers use to tell platforms like Google and Bing what searches we want to show up for.

When someone goes to Google and types in “red shoes”, Google will scan your account to see if you have the keyword “red shoes” in your account.

If you do, then you’re eligible to show up for the query. If not, then your ad won’t show.

There are many other factors that influence whether your ads will show for a certain query, like keyword match types, negative keywords, and your keyword bids, but that’s a topic for another chapter.

Dynamic Search Ads

The second type of targeting for Search is called Dynamic Search Ads, or DSA.

DSA campaigns are relatively new to the PPC playground and are a shift away from keyword targeting.

Instead of providing the platforms with a list of keywords, you provide them with your website and the engines will match to user queries that are related to your site content.