December 4, 2017
Life Event targeting, released earlier this year, is now available to all AdWords advertisers! In case you haven’t heard about it, life event targeting allows you to target users around major life events. The life events include graduating college, moving, and getting married. With the targeting, you can pinpoint users before or after the event to maximize the efficiency of your targeting. For example, if you are a wedding venue you can target people as they are planning their wedding or if you are a local furniture company you can target users after they have moved to your area.
Campaign Expectations
The life event is currently available for Gmail-only and video advertising campaigns. I expect the audiences will be smaller than other targeted audiences, as you are hyper-targeting users in small windows of opportunity. I also expect targeting the audiences will be effective, as per Google, users are likely to change shopping habits and make large purchases around the life events.
Setting Up Life Event Targeting
If you are interested in setting up life event targeting, you must have a Gmail or video campaign already set up, as the targeting is added at the ad group level. It must be a Gmail-only or video campaign, otherwise, the targeting will not appear.
Once you have selected the life events targeting, you can then choose from the three life events and whether you want to target before or after the event. You can also layer in life event targeting with other targeting and add life events as exclusions as well!
Conclusion
Life event targeting is a valuable new option to reach consumers at prominent moments in their lives. Targeting users as they move, graduate college, and get married will allow advertisers to reach consumers as they hit peak purchasing points. Companies are already finding success with the targeting, such as Sonos, which reported a 50% increase in ad recall, a 35% increase in purchase intent, and a 5x lift in Search after using life event targeting. Have you used life targeting yet? What kind of success are you seeing? Reach out and let me know on Twitter!