Google Ads AI needs clear guardrails for effective audience targeting

Google Ads AI offers powerful capabilities for targeting audiences, especially when combined with first-party data and conversion tracking. However, advertisers must also define what the AI should exclude. Negative keywords and placement exclusions have long been used to prevent ads from showing for certain queries, but these methods fall short in today’s intent-driven search environment.

The best approach is to use text guidelines and asset optimizations, available in Performance Max and AI Max Search campaigns. Text guidelines help Google’s AI understand who to target or avoid. For example, an advertiser selling high-quality laptop cases can instruct the AI to target prospects willing to spend more rather than those looking for cheap options. Asset optimizations allow advertisers to turn off automated image and video enhancements and exclude certain URLs.

Another important feature is account-level automated assets, which can dynamically populate an ad’s sitelinks, callouts, images, and more. Advertisers should monitor these assets to ensure accurate branding and control over automated promotions. The status of these assets can be found in the Google Ads interface under advanced settings.

Search campaigns, Demand Gen, and Video campaigns often use optimized targeting and audience expansion by default. Advertisers should turn these options off initially to gather conversion data before enabling them. This ensures the AI is properly trained before expanding the reach of the campaigns.