We’re simplifying Display campaign creation by making it easier for you to use Google’s advanced AI capabilities in your campaign while having better steering and more transparency over where your ads are delivered. These changes are gradually rolling out and may not be available to you yet.
What’s changing
- In the new Display campaign experience, you have the reach and performance that you’re used to, with the ability to choose the level of Google AI's involvement that you prefer in bidding, creatives, and audiences. A smooth setup process allows you to choose between using AI or steering up front, and you have the flexibility to change your AI choices at any time — without creating a new campaign.
- To help you find new and relevant audience segments that drive impressions, clicks, or conversions, we’re introducing optimized targeting. Optimized targeting can act as a stand-alone targeting option, or you can add audience signals to influence optimizing targeting. Optimized targeting looks beyond any manually-selected signals (for example, audience segments or contextual segments) to acquire customers you may have missed to improve campaign performance.
- The campaign construction experience in Google Ads now gives you step-by-step guidance for each part of the campaign. Instead of scrolling through different sections of the campaign, you can jump immediately to a section using the left navigation menu.
See what people are saying about the new Display campaign creation experience
Other benefits
- Support for data-driven attribution: Data-driven attribution gives credit for conversions based on how people engage with your various ads and decide to become your customers. It uses data from your account to determine which ads, keywords, and campaigns have the greatest impact on your business goals.
- Use pay for conversions: If you’re an eligible advertiser that uses Target CPA bidding, you can use pay for conversions to get billed for conversions that you receive at your Target CPA (rather than clicks).
- Greater control and transparency: You can add targeting signals and content exclusions to your campaigns and use the Audience Insights feature to see which types of customers are converting when they see your ads.
Frequently asked questions
What’s happening to my existing Smart Display or standard Display campaigns?
Your active Smart Display campaigns and standard Display campaigns can continue to run. You can also edit these campaigns if you need to make changes. We'll provide more guidance on your existing campaigns as we expand the new Display campaign experience to more advertisers.
What’s happening to the AI-driven targeting features for Smart Display campaigns?
AI-driven targeting features are now available as optimized targeting. When you reach the “Targeting” section in campaign creation, you’ll see that your campaign is using optimized targeting. Like the AI-driven targeting features in Smart Display campaigns, optimized targeting can help you reach new and relevant audiences that are likely to convert. You can add signals to optimized targeting (such as audience segments or keyword segments), but this isn’t required.
What’s happening to the targeting expansion feature for standard Display campaigns?
Targeting expansion is now available as optimized targeting. Like targeting expansion, optimized targeting looks at any audience segments you’ve added to your targeting and uses that as a starting point to find new and relevant audiences for the campaign. As an additional benefit, optimized targeting may look for audience segments that fall outside your selected audience segments if there’s an opportunity for better performance.
Does optimized targeting respect my existing brand safety controls?
Optimized targeting respects your existing brand safety settings (such as content exclusions). You don’t need to make additional changes to your brand safety settings when using optimized targeting.
Can I edit optimized targeting settings using the Google Ads API or Google Ads Editor?
In a future release of the Google Ads API and Google Ads Editor, you'll be able to add optimized targeting to your campaigns (just as you would when creating campaigns directly in Google Ads).
If you have technical questions concerning the Google Ads API (for example, questions directly related to API or SDK usage, errors received from the API or SDK, etc.), please use the troubleshooting steps found on the API Technical Support page.
If you have questions concerning Google Ads API that relate to the Google Ads UI specifically, please click “Contact us” at the bottom of the page.
