Demand Gen custom segments: reach people who searched your keywords

What it does

Search campaigns wait for a query; Demand Gen goes to people while they watch and scroll. The bridge between the two is a custom segment built from search terms: you list words and phrases, and Google builds an audience of people who searched for them on Google. These people do not see the ad at the moment of searching but later, on YouTube, Discover, Gmail and other Demand Gen placements. For recruiting, local services and niche B2B offers this is often the most precise audience Demand Gen can get.

A custom segment is a list of terms with a type. For Demand Gen the useful type is people who searched for any of these terms on Google. Match types do not apply: Google treats the list as signals and finds people whose recent searches fit it. You cannot see who is in the segment, and its size is only an estimate. Keep in mind that Demand Gen can also use optimized targeting and show ads beyond your segment when it expects conversions there; check that setting if you want the audience to stay close to your list.

Pick terms the way a good Search account picks keywords with clear intent. Start from the search terms report of your Search campaigns: queries that have already brought leads are the best seeds. Prefer specific phrases with an obvious goal, such as cdl class a jobs or owner operator lease, over broad words like trucking or jobs that pull in students, news readers and competitors. Add the variants people really type: abbreviations, local names, misspellings and, if you reach Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking people, the Cyrillic queries you found in your demand estimate.

Keep one theme per segment and one segment per ad group, so you can see which intent works: job seekers in one, people looking for training or a license in another. Give each test enough time and budget before judging it, and compare cost per lead or per interview rather than click-through rate alone, because broad segments often click more and convert less. Update the terms when the market changes: a list written a year ago may miss the phrasings people use today, and new services or regulations bring new words.

In AdAce Ads you can give each Demand Gen ad group an audience of people who searched your keywords: the service sets it up as a custom segment from your terms and attaches it to the ad group. This works in existing Demand Gen campaigns, alongside the ad group's locations, languages and channels. Terms can come from your own lists, from the search terms report or from keyword ideas in “Analytics” → “Demand”. Like any change, the audience is a proposal: the current state is read, a person approves with a password and second factor, the result is read back, and the Google change can be validated beforehand without writing anything.

Why it helps

• Reach people with search intent on YouTube, Discover and Gmail.
• Reuse the search terms that already bring leads.
• One clear audience per ad group, easy to compare.
• Each audience change is approved by a person and checked against the account.

How to set it up

1. Collect candidate terms from the search terms report and from “Analytics” → “Demand”.
2. Remove broad and ambiguous words; keep specific phrases with clear intent.
3. In “Campaigns”, open the Demand Gen campaign that will use the audience.
4. Create an ad group or pick an existing one and set an audience of people who searched your terms.
5. Approve the proposal with password and second factor.
6. Once enough data has come in, compare cost per lead between ad groups.

Good to know