Advanced Targeting in Search: From

Keywords to AudiencesAlistair Dent@periscopix4th June 2014

Beyond blue links

We don’t search for pages, but for entities

Entities: pages

Entities: people

Entities: places

Our search queries are a database of our

intents

But we can have intents without a search query

Intents: navigation

Intents: information

Intents: transaction

These intents and entities combine

We call the combinations contexts

AdWords targeting mechanisms

Keywords

Devices

Locations

Time of dayDay of week

Engagement

Demographics

The combinations of these are our way to target context

Bid multipliers

Personas

1. Start with your personas (never start with the data)

2. Define the personas with combinations of

signals

3. Which combinations convert best? (And

worst?)

4. Change your bids!

5. Who needs a different ad?

6. Who needs a different landing page?

Example: store locator traffic

Example: targeting commuters

Example: two-stage subscriptions

The challenges:

1. Attribution is an unsolved problem

2. You don’t know in advance which

combinations are best

3. Data mining bad!

Summary: Personas, context and tricky data