Associate an audience with an ad group or campaign

Once you create a remarketing list in Microsoft Advertising, you can associate it with an ad group/campaign.

A remarketing list is one type of audience and once you create the list in Microsoft Advertising, you can associate it with an ad group/campaign and set a bid adjustment in Microsoft Advertising Editor. This allows you to optimize your campaign for the specific audience. Learn more about remarketing.

Should I associate audiences to my ad groups or my campaigns?

Scenario You should associate audiences to
You're using different audiences and bids for different ad groups in the same campaign. Ad groups: That way, you can manage and optimize each audience individually.
Your account is segmented at the ad group level, or you otherwise want to keep precise control over each ad group. Ad groups: For example, you could test a particular audience in one ad group before applying it to other ad groups.
You're using the same audience and bid for each ad group in your campaign. Campaigns: You just need to set them up once, and don't have to create a new association each time you create a new ad group.

Supported audience types

Audiences are groups of potential customers that you can target. Microsoft Advertising Editor supports several audience types that you can use to get your ads in front of the right customers. First, you’ll need to create an audience list in Microsoft Advertising, which you can then associate with an ad group or campaign in Microsoft Advertising Editor. You’ll also be able to set a bid adjustment.

Audience type What it is Where does it show ads? Is UET required? Whom does it reach? Whose customer data is used?
Custom audiences Lists of customers that are generated using your own customer data. Search network, Microsoft Audience Network No Existing customers Yours
Customer match audiences Lists of email addresses your customers have shared with you, in an effort to reengage. Search network, Microsoft Audience Network No Existing customers Yours
Combined lists Lists created from multiple existing audiences. Search network, Microsoft Audience Network Yes Existing customers Yours and Microsoft's
Dynamic remarketing lists Lists of customers who have interacted with specific product IDs in your catalog feed. Search network (through Microsoft Shopping Campaigns), Microsoft Audience Network Yes Existing customers Yours
In-market audiences Curated lists of customers who have shown purchase intent signals within a particular category. Search network, Microsoft Audience Network

Note: The search network and the Microsoft Audience Network have different sets of in-market audiences.

No New customers Microsoft's
Remarketing lists Lists of people who have visited or interacted with your website before. Search network, Microsoft Audience Network Yes Existing customers Yours
Similar audiences Lists of customers whom Microsoft Advertising has determined show similar attributes to the people on your existing remarketing lists.
  • Note: Not everyone has this feature yet.
Search network, Microsoft Audience Network Yes New customers Microsoft's

Create an association between an ad group/campaign and audience

  1. Select Audiences under Keywords and targeting from the type list in the left pane.
  2. In the data view, select Add Audience Association.
  3. Select Add ad group Audience Association or Add campaign Audience Association.
  4. Then select one or more ad groups/campaigns you want to associate the audiences with.
  5. In the Edit the selected Audience Associations pane, enter the percentage you want to increase/decrease the bid amount for the remarketing list in the Bid adjustment box. You can increase the bid up to 900% and decrease by 90%.
Note

Newly created audience associations inherit the targeting settings of the campaigns/ad groups they belong to. If they don’t belong to any campaigns or ad groups yet, they will be set to Bid only by default.

Create an negative association between an ad group/campaign and audience

  1. Select Negative audiences under Keywords and targeting from the type list in the left pane.
  2. In the data view, select Add Negative Audience Association, and then select either Add ad group Negative Audience Association or Add campaign Negative Audience Association.
  3. Then select one or more ad groups/campaigns you want to exclude the audiences with and select OK.
  4. In Choose audience, select the audiences you want to exclude and select OK.

Adjust your audience targeting settings

You can change the audience targeting from Bid only to Target and bid, which means that ads in this ad group/campaign will only show to people included in the remarketing list.
  1. In the tree view from the left pane, select the campaign in which you want to change the audience targeting setting.
  2. Select Ad groups or Campaigns from the type list in the left pane.
  3. In the Edit the selected ad groups pane, under the Audience targeting section, select Target and bid.
Notes
  • The targeting setting determines if an ad group/campaign must serve ads only to users in the associated audiences (Target and Bid option) or to all users (Bid only option).
  • It is not logically possible for an ad group/campaign to be associated with one audience using the Target and Bid option and another using the Bid only option. Hence, the system enforces the same targeting setting across all the associations for a given ad group/campaign. This means if your ad group/campaign is associated with multiple types of audiences (remarketing and in-market), all of those audiences will have the same targeting setting.

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