Build and manage audiences

Audiences overview

You can use Ads Data Hub to build and manage audiences, which can then be shared with your linked Google Ads and Display & Video 360 accounts. You can use the following data sources to create audience lists in Ads Data Hub:

• YouTube data from Google Ads and Display & Video 360
• Network data from Google Ads, Display & Video 360, and Campaign Manager 360. Note that network data is not durable when third-party cookies are deprecated.

Using these data sources, Ads Data Hub lets you create engaged audience lists. Engaged audience lists show your campaigns or line items to users who have previously clicked on your ad, watched your ad (engaged views on TrueView ads only), or converted. Engaged audience lists are available for use in Display & Video 360 and Google Ads for all Google owned and operated campaign types, such as Search, Shopping, and Performance Max.

Example use cases:

• Churn mitigation strategies: Create a list of users who have been identified as churn risks, but have a prior ad interaction or appear engaged.
• Lifetime value strategies for high-value users: Identify users who are in your CRM and engaged with your YouTube campaigns.
• Affinity propensity to convert by geo: View the different affinity and in-market segments a single user is bucketed in, to understand your customers' interests by region.
• Message sequencing: Create an exclusion list of users for negative retargeting based on conversions and interactions with previous campaigns.
• New CRM Enrollees: Create a list of incremental CRM enrollees who were not enrolled in the CRM prior to exposure, but signed up following a YouTube or Google Ads exposure.

Engaged audiences

Engaged audience lists are event-level remarketing lists that allow you to strategically target users who have previously interacted with your ads. Optimizing your media buys based on a user's previous activities with your ads can lead to better engagement and increased brand loyalty. Additionally, Ads Data Hub lets you aggregate data from multiple accounts and include first-party data to further enrich your audiences.

Engaged audiences allow you to:

• Create audience lists of ad events from signed-in users on YouTube inventory.
• Join your first-party data with ad events (clicks and conversions) to create custom audience segments for remarketing.
• Use your first-party data and YouTube event-level data to decide which users and segments to reach. You can compile and store lists and target them with focused ads. Targeting can be done by selecting specific users, specific segments, or by seeding users and finding a lookalike audience.

In order to protect end-user privacy, not all events are available to be used in audience queries. In Ads Data Hub, for the purposes of remarketing, you can only build audiences of users who have had follow-up events, such as clicks or conversions, with one of your ads or users who are matched based on the first-party data you have brought in using BigQuery.

Events not meeting this criteria are automatically filtered. Additional events may be filtered if there's a risk that they could reveal sensitive information about users. In order to bring in PII, you must be fully onboarded onto user-provided data matching.

Create an engaged audience

Tip: Access the new UI experience, which includes updated query templates and audience query scheduling by logging into your account at Ads Data Hub for Marketers.

1. Click Audiences > Remarketing > + Create audience.
2. For Audience name, enter a name for the audience list.
3. For Description, enter a description of the audience list. This is helpful to other users on your account who work with the audience list.
4. For Data Source, select the Ads Data Hub account that contains the campaign data to be used.
5. Under Destinations, select at least one linked destination account to which the list should be shared:
   1. To select Google Ads accounts: Click Choose customers.
   2. To select Display & Video 360 accounts: Click Choose advertisers & partners.
6. Click + Create audience query, and then do one of the following:
   1. Write your own query using BigQuery compatible SQL. Learn about available schema.
   2. Use one of the sample audience queries by copying it and pasting it into the query editor.
7. Click Done.
8. Click Create.
9. Optional: To make changes to the list, click More.
   1. In the menu that pops up, select Edit, Re-run or Delete.
10. To activate the audience in your linked Google Ads or Display & Video 360 account, see Activate audiences.

After writing your audience query, you'll need to run the query to populate the audience list.

Schema

You can use these tables in engaged audience queries, depending on the type of users you are trying to find:

Note: you can't directly select from impression tables—for example, adh.cm_dt_impressions. Google Ads audience tables have pre-joined impression data, available using the joined_impression fields. Data Transfer-based clicks and activities have available impression data in the event fields.

Table	Network users	Signed-in YouTube users
adh.google_ads_creative_conversions	(clicks)	(TrueView ad clicks and engaged views)
adh.dv360_youtube_creative_conversions		(TrueView ad clicks and engaged views)
adh.google_ads_conversions_audience
adh.dv360_youtube_conversions_audience	N/A
adh.cm_dt_activities_events		N/A
adh.cm_dt_activities_attributed		N/A
adh.cm_dt_clicks		N/A
adh.dv360_dt_activities_events		N/A
adh.dv360_dt_activities_attributed		N/A
adh.dv360_dt_clicks		N/A
Preceding tables with suffix _match	(uses cookie match data)	(uses cookie match and PII match data)
	Adds a column called external_cookie May affect match rates
Ads Data Hub dimension tables	Can be joined with event data
Your 1PD tables	Can be joined to _match tables using external_cookie column Can be joined to conversions using u_value, ord_value, tran_value, or other_data

The following fields from Ads Data Hub tables can't be used in engaged audience queries:

• matching_targeted_keywords
• site_id
• placement_id
• dv360_url
• dv360_site_id
• publisher_domain
• content_url

Sample queries

Create an audience of all users that have clicked or converted on an ad for a particular set of campaigns:

/* Parameter configuration:
conversion_types: array<int64>
customer_ids: array<int64>
campaign_ids: array<int64> */

SELECT
  user_id
FROM
  adh.google_ads_conversions_audience
  -- or from adh.google_ads_creative_conversions
WHERE
  joined_impression.customer_id IN unnest (@customer_ids)
AND
  joined_impression.campaign_id IN unnest (@campaign_ids)
    /* Optional: Use desired conversion types from the Google Ads UI as a filter.
    AND conversion_type IN unnest (@conversion_types) */

Create an audience of all users that have interacted with particular campaign and match customer data using a match table:

SELECT
  user_id
FROM
  adh.google_ads_creative_conversions_match
WHERE
  joined_impression.campaign_id IN (@campaign_ids)
AND
  external_cookie IN (@match_ids)

Create an audience of all users that have interacted with a Display & Video 360 campaign with a particular u_value:

SELECT
  user_id
FROM
  adh.dv360_dt_activities_attributed
WHERE
  event.u_value IN (@uvalue_ids)
AND e
  vent.dv360_line_item_id IN (@line_item_ids)

Create an audience of all users that are related to specific floodlight activities:

SELECT
  user_id
FROM
  adh.cm_dt_activities_attributed
WHERE
  event.floodlight_config_id IN (@floodlight_ids)

Create an engaged audience joined with first-party data:

SELECT
  user_id
FROM
  adh.google_ads_conversions_audience_match a
  -- or from adh.google_ads_creative_conversions_match
JOIN
  `GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT.1P_DATASET.1P_CRM_TABLE` AS audience
ON
  lower(to_hex(a.external_cookie)) = audience.USER_ID_FIELD

Run an audience query

Audience queries can be run either to populate a newly-created audience list, or to add users to an existing list. Both of these actions have similar steps. There is a 1:1 relationship between audience queries and audience lists.

Note: New audience lists can take up to 20 hours to be visible in chosen destinations. However, new users added to existing audience lists are considered members of the list for new ad impressions immediately after the query completes.

1. Open Audiences.
2. Click the name of the audience query you want to run.
3. Click Run.
4. If applicable, in the Match table from box, type or select the Ads Data Hub account that contains the campaign data to be used.
5. Enter a date range and time zone.
6. Click Run.

Activate audiences

Audiences can only be used for remarketing in Google Ads and Display & Video 360 . By default, the audiences you create aren't shared to your linked accounts. In order to use lists that you've populated using Ads Data Hub, you must selectively share those lists with your linked accounts.

To share an audience list:

1. Open Audiences.
2. Click the name of the audience query you want to run.
3. Google Ads:
   1. Click Choose customers.
   2. Click the checkbox next to the advertiser or partner you want to share the list with.
   3. Click Done.
4. Display & Video 360:
   1. Click Choose advertisers & partners.
   2. Click the checkbox next to the advertiser or partner you want to share the list with.
   3. Click Done.
5. Click Save.

You can also stop sharing a user list with a specific account. To update your sharing configuration:

1. Open Audiences.
2. Click the name of the audience query you want to run.
3. Google Ads:
   1. Click Choose customers.
   2. Click the checkbox next to the advertiser or partner you want to share or stop sharing the list with.
   3. Click Done.
4. Display & Video 360:
   1. Click Choose advertisers & partners.
   2. Click the checkbox next to the advertiser or partner you want to share or stop sharing the list with.
   3. Click Done.
5. Click Save.

Measure audiences and performance

To measure the performance of your audiences:

• In Display & Video 360, use the Audience Performance report. The Audience Performance report looks at all the users you reached, and groups your impressions, clicks, and conversions by the audience lists those users were in.
• In Google Ads, use Audience reporting. Audience reporting shows you how audiences are performing, and includes ad group, campaign, and account-level performance metrics on demographics, audience segments, and exclusions.

Requirements and privacy considerations

In addition to the requirements listed below, the lists that you create must comply with the eligibility and targeting policies of the platform in which the list is used, as well as Ads Data Hub's policies.

Requirements for creating engaged audiences

To create engaged audiences, every Google Ads and Display & Video 360 account linked to your Ads Data Hub account must comply with the targeting policies of the respective platform. For the complete platform specific policies, see Google Ads Personalized advertising policy and Display & Video 360 Platforms program policies.

Requirements for receiving engaged audiences

To be eligible as a recipient of engaged audiences, the linked account must have a good history of policy compliance and a good payment history. For Google Ads, the linked account must have 90 days of Google Ads history and more than $50,000 (USD) total lifetime spend.

To receive engaged audiences, the linked account must comply with the targeting policies regarding sensitive interest categories of the respective platform. For complete platform specific policies, see Personalized advertising policy for Google Ads and Sensitive categories in Display & Video 360 brand safety targeting for Display & Video 360.

Aggregation requirements

Audience lists must contain 100 or more 30-day active users to serve on network inventory, and 1,000 or more 30-day active YouTube users to serve on YouTube. This means that the audience lists you create won't be eligible for targeting in Google Ads and Display & Video 360 while fewer than the required number of users on the list were active in the last 30 days.

First-party data

Data that you've uploaded into your BigQuery account (first-party data) can be used to augment ad event data to create audience lists using cookie matching, custom floodlight variables, or user-provided data matching. To create audience lists with only first-party data, use the Ads Data Hub for Marketers experience. See First-party audiences.

Note: Third-party data isn't supported for audience activation.

First-party consent acknowledgement

Warning: Failure to acknowledge consent or refusing consent acknowledgment results in the inability to use your first-party data (1PD) within Ads Data Hub. For example, you cannot bring in new 1PD or join existing 1PD with your linked ads data. All use cases, such as user-provided data matching and audience activation using 1PD, are unavailable. This includes any scheduled 1PD imports.

To ensure you are able to use your first-party data in Ads Data Hub, you must confirm that you have obtained proper consent to share data from EEA end users with Google per the EU user consent policy and Ads Data Hub policy. This requirement applies to each Ads Data Hub account, and must be updated every time you upload new first-party data. Any one user can make this acknowledgement on behalf of the entire account.

Note that the same Google service query rules that apply to analysis queries also apply to audience queries. For example, you can't run cross-service queries on users in the EEA when you create a remarketing list.

To learn how to acknowledge consent in Ads Data Hub, see Consent requirements for the European Economic Area.

Recency

The list membership for engaged audiences on non-Google owned and operated properties is 7 days (as of May 15, 2023).

You can refresh this lifespan by re-adding user IDs to the audience. Engaged audience lists must be updated by running queries manually.

API samples

To create audience lists using the API, see customers.userLists.

Audience activation API samples are available in Java only. Download the sample API code.