• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 26, 2023

Google just changed ad targeting. On Thursday the company launched in beta “search themes” to give marketers a way to reach consumer audiences with specific interests.

The feature is driven through Performance Max, which supports performance campaigns based on specified conversion goals. The idea is to help identify new or incremental traffic that drives improved performance when that traffic can’t be found with keywordless AI technology.

Performance Max historically analyzed assets, feeds, and landing pages to predict ad placements — including search queries — that will perform well for campaigns. But now with search themes in beta, marketers also can fill the gaps by adding information about the business-like sales and promotions in the ad.

Adding search themes tells Google AI to reach out for the traffic through Performance Max campaigns across all Google Ads inventory, including Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, Maps, and Display. It also helps you find audiences across channels based on users’ search behavior. 

Google believes that by integrating Google AI, marketers can expand their reach to consumers on all channels, including Search. For example, search themes in beta can become helpful if a company has knowledge about a business or a customer from which AI can’t easily or quickly learn.

Let’s say the business’s landing page does not have the complete details or the latest updates about products and services offered. Or the company just expanded into a new market or launched a new product or service where the campaigns don’t have extensive performance history. In another instance, new promotions or sales for the holiday season where the business does not have extensive performance history also can support search themes.

Google also said that for Search inventory, “exact match keywords that are identical to the search queries will continue to be prioritized over search themes and other keywords.” The search themes are optional, however.

Marketers can add up to 25 search themes per asset group. Google said search themes will respect brand exclusions in Performance Max account-level negative keywords.

Results driven from search themes will drive customers to landing pages that marketers have indicated via the Final URL expansion, page feeds, and URL contains settings.

Marketers also can see the search categories that the ads matched to in search terms insights at campaign and account levels, and associated conversion performance.