What are my options for audiences?

Audiences help you reach new and existing customers based on their purchase intent signals and interests, how they've engaged with your business and interacted with your ads before, their LinkedIn profile, as well as their active web searches. These curated groups of customers help you get your ads in front of the right people when they're ready to take action and make purchases.

Microsoft Advertising offers several different types of audiences that are tailored to suit your advertising needs. Review the table below to learn more about each audience type, how it works, the campaigns where it's available, and the customers it targets.

Audience type	What it is	Campaign types	Whose customer data is used?	Whom does it reach?	Is UET required?
Custom audiences	Lists of customers that are generated using your own customer data. - Learn more about custom audiences.	Search Audience Performance Max Shopping Lodging	Yours	Existing customers
Customer match lists	Lists of email addresses your customers have shared with you to reengage with them. - Learn more about customer match lists.	Search Audience Performance Max Shopping Lodging	Yours	Existing customers
Remarketing lists	Lists of people who have visited or interacted with your website before. - Learn more about remarketing.	Search Audience Performance Max Shopping Lodging	Yours	Existing customers
Dynamic remarketing lists	Lists of customers who have interacted with specific product IDs in your Microsoft Merchant Center catalog feed. - Learn more about dynamic remarketing lists.	Search Audience Performance Max Shopping	Yours	Existing customers
Similar audiences	Lists of customers whom Microsoft Advertising has determined show similar attributes to the people on your existing remarketing lists. - Not everyone has this feature yet. - Learn more about similar audiences.	Search Audience Performance Max Shopping Lodging	Microsoft's	New customers
Impression-based remarketing lists	Lists of people who have viewed your ads. - Not everyone can use this audience list type yet. If you can't, don't worry—it's coming soon! - Learn more about impression-based remarketing.	Search Audience Performance Max Shopping Lodging	Microsoft's	People who have viewed your ads.
In-market audiences	Curated lists of customers who have shown purchase intent signals within a particular category. - Learn more about in-market audiences.	Search Audience Performance Max Shopping Lodging Note: Search ads and Audience ads have different sets of in-market audiences. Take a look at this up-to-date list of all the available in-market audiences.	Microsoft's	New customers
Custom segments	Segments of customers who have shown purchase intent signals within customized categories defined by you. - Not everyone has this feature yet. If you don't, don't worry—it's coming soon! - Learn more about custom segments.	Audience	Microsoft's	New customers
LinkedIn profile targeting	Lists of potential customers grouped by the company, industry, or job function listed in their LinkedIn profiles. - Learn more about LinkedIn profile targeting.	Search Audience Shopping Lodging	LinkedIn's	New customers
Combined lists	Multiple audience lists combined together using AND, OR, and NOT conditions. - Not everyone has this feature yet. - Learn more about combined lists.	Search Audience Performance Max Shopping Lodging	Depends on combination	Depends on combination	Depends on combination

Note

For more information on UET, take a look at What is UET and how can it help me?

Note

You cannot download audience lists from the Audience Library. Microsoft Advertising follows strict privacy standards, and these lists may include sensitive user data. Downloading them directly could expose personally identifiable information.

FAQ

• What are the limits on audiences?

  Case	Limits
  Total number of audiences	Manager account level: 5000 per audience type. Account level: 1000 per audience type, with two caveats: - This includes audiences created within an account and audiences that were created in another account with Sharing set to Across all accounts. So, for example, if your account already has 1000 remarketing lists shared with it, you won't be able to create another remarketing list in this account. - There is no account-level limit on custom audiences, only the 5000 audiences limit at the manager account level.
  Total number of associations	20,000,000 associations (including both targeting and exclusion associations) per account, with one exception: - Only 1000 in-market audience exclusions allowed per account.
  Associations that can be created in bulk	Refer to limits in bulk upload.
  Associations that can be viewed, edited, or deleted by Microsoft Advertising	Refer to limits in bulk upload.

• What if a customer is in more than one audience? Am I charged for multiple bid adjustments?

  No, you will only be charged once.

  A customer could either be:

  • In multiple audiences within the same audience type (for example, remarketing list A and remarketing list B), or
  • In multiple audiences across different audience types (for example, remarketing list A and in-market audience C).

  When this happens, only the audience with the highest bid adjustment is attributed. Bid adjustments are not combined, and you are only charged once. If the bid adjustments are the same for all applicable audiences, one audience is chosen for attribution by the system and you are charged once.

• Can I use a "Target and bid" setting for one audience list and a "Bid only" setting for another audience list in the same ad group or campaign?

  No, you can only select one targeting setting per ad group or campaign that will apply to all your audience lists in that ad group or campaign (either "Target and bid" or "Bid only"). It isn't possible to use different targeting settings in the same ad group or campaign for remarketing lists, in-market audiences, and custom audiences. Whichever setting you've selected most recently ("Target and bid" or "Bid only") overrides any previous settings.