The numero uno search engine will be retiring its ‘other interests’ category in the interest of serving the advertisers more effectively. This was a service that was introduced by Google in 2009 in the interest market category connecting advertisers with people across the display network based on customer interests. Using this advertisers could get a better inkling about their core target group. ‘Other interests’ was basically built on topics. But now it seems that it is limited in addressing advertisers’ extensive targeting needs and there is a lack of specificity too here.

‘Other interests’ was deployed by Google in order to target people based on implicit interests. This was done on the basis of types of web pages that these people visited on the Google Display Network. It was but natural that Google would pull the plug on ‘other interests’ since there was an overlap with the advanced audience solutions. But you can still access historical performance data from ‘other interest’ targeting, going forward.

With each passing day, Google has been launching new and powerful interest-based capability tools like ‘affinity’, ‘custom affinity’ and ‘in-market audiences’. These tools offer much more flexibility and control as compared to the ‘other interests’ tool. If you have a ‘other interests’ campaign account then it will run for some time and then it will be automatically upgraded to one of the three tools viz.

• Affinity audiences – To create brand awareness
• Custom affinity audiences – For niche audience targeting
• In-market audience – targeting prepped shoppers on the verge of buying

All these above tools use very sophisticated audience signals to attract and retain very specific group of customers. It makes segregation on the basis of customers wanting to buy particular products or services and such other criteria. So when you upgrade to the new services, if the need be, Google  can help you out with campaign type recommendations based on your current performance goals and bidding preferences.

Let us have your inputs on this imminent changes in advertising with Google! Contact us to advertise across the extensive Google Network and beyond!