How to Explore Your Native Ads Audience Demographics and Interests đ (10)
How to Explore Your Native Ads Audience Demographics and Interests đ
Alright guys, Iâve been wanting to write about this for some time, but before doing it, I wanted to run some tests first.
So, when promoting on native ad networks, we usually miss some important information on our targeted audience â age, gender or even audience interests.
Without having access to such information, we might be showing the wrong product and angle to the targeted audience, therefore we may end up getting a pretty low conversion rate.
Since most native ad networks donât give us an option where to get such information, this workaround can help us get some actionable insights about our targeted audience. Allowing us to tweak our campaigns and improve our performance.
Considering that native ads tend perform better when using landing pages, with the help of Google Analytics, we can use our landing pages to extract additional information about our page visitors, not just to warm them up.
Please check the screenshots below to get a better idea of what I am talking about.
Age reporting:
Gender reporting:
Audience Interest:
As you might notice, from this test campaign audience I was able to easily get the Age, Gender as well as the Affinity Categories and In-Market Segments according to Googleâs data.
Hereâs a quick rundown of my setup...
Step 1: Create a Google Analytics Property
This step is pretty easy! Simply go to https://analytics.google.com then signup for an account using your existing gmail account.
Then, once inside Google Analytics, follow these sub-steps:
b. Give your new GA account a friendly name (e.g. your domain name)
c. Select Web under the property type you want to measure
d. Enter your landing page name and URL, as well as set the reporting time zone.
Pro tip: When selecting the time zone, itâd be great to set it on the same time zone your native ad network is, so that you can easily compare stats between the two if needed.
Step 2: Add Google Analytics code to my landing page(s)
Once you finish creating your new GA property account, you will be redirected to your GA tracking code, that you will need to add to your page.
Copy your new Google Analytics tracking code, then paste it between your <head> ... </head> tags of your landing page.
Step 3: Enable Demographics and Interests reports
Sign in to your Google Analytics account, then go to: Audience > Demographics > Overview
Click enable as in the above example screenshot and youâre done.
Step 4: Pass Traffic source information (campaign id, ad id, site id)
Now, since most of us use click trackers, we will pass our traffic source information like campaign id, ad id and site id using our click tracker tokens.
Hereâs an example passing such information using
utm_campaign=REPLACE&utm_source=REPLACE&utm_term=R EPLACE&utm_content=REPLACE
b. Replace the utm parameter values using custom variable tokens on your tracker.
c. Save your landing page changes on your tracker.
Important note: As you may notice, we are using custom variable tokens and not the tokens as provided by the native ad network (traffic source). This because we are adding such information using our tracker and not directly from the traffic source. Make sure to check your traffic source configuration to properly set the names of your custom variable tokens.
Youâre all set! All you need to do is to let your campaigns get some traffic in order to be able to see such data on your Google Analytics account.
As you may notice, this guide opens the doors to potential optimizations on your funnel. Helping you to easily tweak images, angles or add more appealing products based on your audience demographics and interest.
But you are not limited to that only! Especially if you can run your offers on Google Ads 
With the following additional step, you can easily collect and create audiences for Google Ads, using your landing page visitors tracked with Google Analytics.
This way, once your native visitors land to your landing page, and like to search on google about your product or offer, before taking any action. You can easily get them back to your funnel without leaving a chance to your competition to convert an already warmed up buyer.
Or, in case youâd like to level up your retargeting, you can retarget your audience on Display and YouTube ads from the same Google Ads account.
Hereâs how to send your Google Analytics âpixeledâ audience to your Google Ads account:
1. Login to your Google Ads account then go to:
Tools & Settings > Setup > Linked Accounts
2. Select Google Analytics to view the list of properties you can link on your Google Ads account.
3. Find the property of your native landing pages, then click on Link
4. Enable the view and site metrics options, then click on Save.
Now that you have linked your GA with G-Ads account, you can create your audience in just a few clicks by going to:
Tools & Settings > Shared Library > Audience Manager > Create New Audience
In the create new audience window, simply add a name to your audience, then under rule settings enter the domain or path of your landing page(s) in the matching rule conditions (example below).
Once youâve saved your audience, you can create your retargeting ads on all google ad formats that youâd like to.
Happy re-targeting! 
Thanks. This is exactly what I have been meaning to do to get the extra demographic info.
Now seeing your post will give me the final push to implement this on my landing pages!
Thanks for the info.
Could you please just clarify the adding of custom variable tokens?
Like an example of the traffic source custom variable token names configuration?
Much appreciated!
This is really helpful! Thank you for sharing.
Super awesome @platinum - helpful indeed as I am planning to start my native ads campaign day after tomorrow. And start focusing on push traffic campaign tomorrow. Can I use these principles for push traffic on evadav? Also, is it possible to install facebook pixel too?
This makes me wonder.. Could we use this to send people to an offer based on their gender or interests?
Originally Posted by bluewax
Originally Posted by wealthycpa
Originally Posted by eurosen
@platinum
Brilliant thank you for the explanation on adding custom variables.
Much appreciated!
Part 2 of the guide is out! 
Originally Posted by platinum
Also, one quick question: i read on several posts feedback saying that adding a GA/GTM pixels led to more scrutiny and bans from Adwords. Is this something you experienced?
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