In Google Ads, optimized targeting and expansion can help you reach more people beyond your targeted audiences. But depending on your goals, using this feature may not be a good idea.

In this post, I explain how to turn it off and why it matters.

How do I turn off expansion and optimized targeting?

Screenshot from Google Ads with yellow highlighting and a red circle, showing how to turn off optimized targeting and expansion.

You can disable optimized targeting within the ad group settings of your Google Ads campaign. Here’s how to do it.

In your Google Ads account:

  1. Click Campaigns Google Ads campaign icon, represented by a bullhorn
  2. In the Campaigns drop down, click Ad groups
  3. Hover over the applicable ad group and click the Settings gear icon Setting gear icon as it appears in Google Ads
  4. Click Edit ad group targeting
  5. Select the drop down for Optimized targeting
  6. Uncheck the box next to “Use optimized targeting”
  7. Click the Save button

Screenshot of Google Ads showing where to turn off Optimized Targeting and Expansion

Note that optimized targeting only applies to Display campaigns, Demand Gen and Video action campaigns (VAC). It doesn’t apply to Search campaigns.

What is optimized targeting and expansion?

Optimized targeting and audience expansion is a feature within Google Ads that allows your ads to be shown to people that Google considers relevant to your ads or landing pages. It expands your targeted audiences beyond those you’ve entered and gives Google more control over where your ads are placed.

In short: when optimized targeting is enabled, Google optimizes your ad delivery to include additional audiences that it believes are similar to those that you’re targeting.

For more details on how this works, check out Google’s page about optimized targeting. (Note that audience expansion was previously a separate functionality, but it is now largely controlled by the settings for optimized targeting.)

Why turn it off (or on)?

Optimized targeting is now enabled by default for certain types of campaigns in Google Ads (such as Display). This can be useful if you want your ads to reach more people beyond the audiences you target.

But if you only want your ads to be seen by the people you’ve actually identified in your campaign, then you need to turn this feature off.

Example of when to disable it

Remarketing campaigns are one example of a scenario in which you might want to disable optimized targeting.

Recently, I launched a tiny remarketing campaign for a small-business client. When I say “tiny,” I mean truly minuscule: the ad budget was only $2 day, targeting a small list of recent website visitors. The list size was about 50-100 people.

So when I noticed the campaign racking up thousands of impressions within hours of turning it on, I knew something was wrong. (The list size was too small to be reaching so many people so quickly.)

Sure enough, the culprit was the optimized targeting:

Screenshot of Google Ads highlighting the audience performance metric for Expansion and Optimized Targeting

For this campaign, at this small budget, I only wanted my client’s remarketing ads to be shown to people who previously visited their website. These are people who already showed intent and saw the brand, so I wanted every cent of my client’s budget to go to that specific audience, not anyone else. Solution: turn off the optimized targeting.

When should you use it?

In many situations, you may find it valuable to use optimized targeting. Google is increasingly good at identifying similar audiences that are likely to click (and convert) based on a variety of signals. So if your budget has room for testing, go ahead and see how it performs.

If you’re running a traditional display campaign with relatively loose targeting parameters, like demographics or topics, then it can’t hurt to let Google find you some similar audiences.

But if you are tightly targeting an audience based on specific user activity, such as page views or conversion actions, then you probably want to turn off optimized targeting.

Tip: Try testing optimized targeting vs. non-optimized by running two identical ad groups side by side. One of the ad groups should have optimized targeting turned off, while the other has it turned on.

See how much you’re spending on expansion and optimized targeting

Screenshot of Google Ads showing where to view performance data for Audience Expansion and Optimized Targeting

You can view the impressions and clicks you’re getting from Google’s optimized targeting within your Audience performance reporting.

Here’s how to view this data:

  1. Click on Campaigns Google Ads campaign icon, represented by a bullhorn
  2. Select the applicable campaign from the Campaigns drop-down
  3. Under Audiences, keywords and content, select Audiences
  4. Under Audience segments, click the drop-down to Show table
  5. View the optimized traffic in the row label “Total: Expansion and optimized targeting”

Some final considerations

Generally speaking, if you have a limited budget, then I don’t recommend using Display campaigns at all. (See my related blog post on why Search is usually the best Google Ads campaign for small businesses.)

While the low CPCs and high impressions may be attractive, Display ads are notorious for cheap, unwanted traffic (sometimes generated by bots). There’s no arguing that Display can generate tons of clicks, usually for a fraction of the cost of Search ads. But in many cases, it’s a waste of money that would be better spent on Search.

Conclusion

If you only want to target the specific audiences that you identify in a Google Ads Display campaign, then you should turn off optimized targeting. You can disable it within the Ad group settings by clicking “Edit ad group targeting.”

Lost? Need some guidance?

Let us help you make the best decision for your Google Ads account, so you don’t waste a penny of your ad spend.  Request pricing for hands-on Google Ads management or email me directly at mike@marlinsem.com.