industry targeting showing less clicks

Hello B. Ramburn,

Hope you´re doing well!!

This is Pranavi from Microsoft Advertising Community Forum! and I will be assisting you on this query.

We completely understand your concern. You can target your ads using a variety of variables. You can also apply bid adjustment to increase your ad's exposure to potential customers that you have targeted.

1. From the collapsible menu on the left, select Campaigns.
2. Select the name of the campaign you want to change.
3. To target by geographic location:

• Select Locations.
• Select locations you want to target or exclude. You can target and change your bid adjustment for:
  • All available countries/regions
  • Selected countries/regions and states/provinces
  • Selected counties within the United States
  • Selected cities, metro areas, and postal codes. *Note:
• Not all postal codes are supported for targeting exactly within their boundaries. If you target an unsupported postal code, it will be converted into a radius target (see below).
• For Canadian and UK postal codes, only the first segment (for Canada, the first 3 characters; for UK, the first 2-to-4-character segment) is recognized. If you enter the second segment, you will only be able to use radius targeting.
• The boundaries of some postal codes in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and United Kingdom do not appear accurately on the map you see in Microsoft Advertising, but targeting within them will still function accurately.
  • A specified radius around a postal code, coordinates*, landmark, or area. (Note: You cannot exclude using radius targeting.)

*Coordinates can be searched for in the format "[latitude], [longitude]" with the degrees in decimal form — for example, "44.590,-104.716".

• Please note if you're using this feature in Smart Mode, it's only available in United States and Canada. For more information, see Get to know your Microsoft Advertising account modes.
• Select who exactly should see your ads: People in your targeted locations, people searching for or viewing pages about your targeted locations, or both.

1. To target by other variables, you can navigate through different pages from the collapsible menu on the left. a. To target by specific day or time of day, adjust the settings in Ad schedule. You can increase bid adjustments up to 900% and decrease them by as much as 90%. Note: When targeting by time, you can choose to base it on Your account's time zone or the Ad viewer's time zone. b. To adjust other campaign targets like Age, Gender, Device, Company, Industry, and Job Function, select Demographics. c. For Age and Gender, you can increase bid adjustments up to 900% and decrease them by as much as 90%. Keep in mind that when you apply bid adjustments to age group and gender, your ads will appear more frequently for the targeted demographic but will still also appear for non-targeted demographic. d. To target by company, industry, and/or job function, select Edit target under each target type. Search or browse for companies, industries, and/or job functions, and select Target for the appropriate ones. Select Done for each target type. Finally, set a bid adjustment for each target. e. To target by device type, select Device. You can target desktop (including laptop) computers, tablets, or smartphones. Bid adjustments for device types can be anywhere from -100% to +900%.
2. Select Save.

Getting your ad in front of the right people—that's what targeting is all about. With targeting, Microsoft Advertising can help you focus a campaign or ad group on potential customers who meet specific criteria, so you can increase the chance that they see your ads. For a full list of country/region availability for ad language and location targeting, see How does ad language and location targeting affect who can see my ads?

Also, you can find more information about display ads by accessing the following link: About Microsoft Audience (Display) Ads

Hope this information is helpful. Also, I will be sending you a private message where you can reply if you're facing any challenges and we will be happy to assist you.

Thank you,
Pranavi | Microsoft Advertising Support Specialist | 800-518-5689

hi Pranavi,

Thanks but I was able to select the industry that I want to target but what I am asking is:

• how can I fix my settings so that it is targeting the selected industry?

My group click count is 170 but the industry-specific click is only 8, where is the remaining 162 clicks gone?

Hello B.Ramburn,

Thank you for your response.

We understand that you want to see where the clicks are coming from and would like to get clicks from a certain industry that you are targeting.

In this case we suggest you run a URL publisher report and Professional Demographics for finding out where the clicks are coming from.

Professional Demographics:

What it shows: The impressions, clicks, spend, and average cost per click for each ad group, organized by company, industry, and job function.
Why run it: To discover how your campaigns and ad groups are resonating with different companies, industries, and job functions.

Steps to run the report:

• Go to Reports (on the top right corner of Microsoft Ads UI page)
• Select - Default report
• Select - Targeting
• Select - Professional Demographics

Website URL (publisher):

What it shows: The impressions, clicks, spend, and conversions for websites on the Microsoft Search Network and the Microsoft Audience Network. This data can be sorted by website URL, account, campaign, and ad group.

Why run it: To see which website URLs are or aren’t performing well enough for your campaign or ad group target settings. For example, if ad impressions at those URLs yield a low click-through-rate, then you might decide to exclude those websites from your campaign.

Steps to run the report:

• Go to Report on the to right corner
• Select - Default report
• Select - Performance
• Select - Website URL

Monitoring clicks: Telling the good from the bad

Each time your ad is clicked, Microsoft Advertising categorizes the click as either a standard-quality click, a low-quality click, or an invalid click.

Standard-quality clicks are clicks that are most likely from potential customers. These are the clicks that have the best potential to drive customer awareness of your business and boost your conversion rate. On the other hand, low-quality and invalid clicks typically don't result in conversions or value to your business. These types of click often originate from spiders, robots, questionable sources, or test servers.

Monitoring your clicks

To get the most from your ad campaign, you want to be sure you're getting as many standard-quality clicks as possible. To learn how many clicks Microsoft Advertising has identified as low quality or invalid, see our topic on performance reports. Select the Low-quality clicks and Low-quality click rate (%) performance statistics for your reports.

You should also monitor your ad click traffic for any unexplained changes in click volume, click-through rate, or conversion rate. Here is a suggestion for monitoring ad click traffic:

• Monitor ad group activity by running regular Microsoft Advertising performance reports.

Why: Understanding your average daily, weekly, and monthly click volume can help you spot sudden, significant changes in click volume, which might be an indication of invalid clicks. For more information, see Create a report

• Please go through following link to know more about Monitoring clicks: Telling the good from the bad

Ad groups, audiences & targets

You can choose the audiences you want the ads in the ad group to target. This is one of the major differences between audience marketing and search marketing: Here, you are telling us what kind of people you want to see your ads, instead of telling us what keywords you want your ads to appear for. You can choose any combination of the possible target criteria:

Industry

With industry targeting, you can target your ads to be more (or less) likely to appear for people who most recently worked in specific industries (according to their LinkedIn profiles).

1. Search or browse for a type of industry.
2. For the appropriate industry, select Target or Exclude.

Job function

With job function targeting, you can target your ads to be more (or less) likely to appear for people who most recently had specific kinds of jobs (according to their LinkedIn profiles).

1. Search or browse for a type of job function.
2. For the appropriate job function, select Target or Exclude.

Once you submit your criteria, Select Save & go to next step.

• Please access this link to know more about audience campaign

Also, if you want to prevent your ad from appearing in specific locations, on specific web sites within the search network, you can configure exclusions.

To prevent specific websites from showing your ads

1. To exclude specific websites at the campaign level:
2. From the collapsible menu on the left, select Campaigns.
3. Select the checkbox next to the name of the campaign that you want to edit.
4. To exclude specific websites at the ad group level:
5. From the collapsible menu on the left, select All campaigns > Ad groups > Ad groups.
6. Select the checkbox next to the name of the ad group that you want to edit.
7. Select Edit > Other changes.
8. From the Campaign settings or Select a setting dropdown menu, select Website exclusions and then enter the URLs of websites you want to exclude in the box.
9. Select Apply.

Note: You can specify a maximum of 2,500 URLs to exclude.

Help link: How to prevent your ads from showing to certain people

Hope this information is helpful. Also, I will be sending you a private message where you can reply if you have any further queries, and we will be happy to assist you.

Thank you,
Pranavi | Microsoft Advertising Support Specialist | 800-518-5689

hi Paranavi,

Why is there just 8 clicks against the selected industry? the rest of the clicks are showing as other industries.

Why is it not just targeting the market i selected.

Hello B.Ramburn,

Hope you´re doing well. Thank you for your response.

I have sent you a private message where, I have requested you to provide us your account details so that we can investigate more and help accordingly.

Appreciate your understanding. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you,
Pranavi | Microsoft Advertising Support Specialist | 800-518-5689