About a month ago, Google announced last month that “Other interests” targeting on the Google Display Network would be going away. Originally, this was supposed to go into effect on January 15, but that was pushed back to February 17, 2015.
If you are an SEO who has at least one campaign that uses “Other interests” targeting, it would be a smart to update those to target affinity audiences, custom affinity audiences, or even in-market audiences by the 15th of May. If you don’t do it by that date, Google do it for you.
In case you’re wanting a refresher on what each of these targeting features are, here is what they do in Google’s words:
- Affinity audiences – This is for brand awareness. With affinity, you can reach TV-like audiences on a broad scale to drive brand awareness.
- Custom affinity audiences – You can utilize custom affinity when you are dealing with niche audiences. Reach as many potential customers as possible with an affinity to a specific product area.
- In-market audiences – Using in-market targeting, you can reach specific audiences ready to make a purchase in a specific product or service area
According to Google, it will be launching an “Upgrade Center” for users to manage campaign targeting updates in bulk.