An in-market audience is a group of people whom an advertising platform has classified as actively researching or comparing products in a specific category, and therefore likely to buy soon. The platform builds the group from behaviour, such as searches, page visits, ad clicks, app use and conversions, rather than from anything a person declares. Advertisers then attach the group to a campaign to show ads only to those people, or to bid differently when they appear. The concept exists to separate the shopper from the enthusiast: someone reading car reviews this week is worth more to a dealer than someone who has liked cars for a decade.

Google's version is the industry reference. Since late 2021 Google has called these groups in-market segments, though "in-market audiences" remains the common term across trade press and at Microsoft and Amazon. Google's help centre defines them as a way to "reach users based on their recent purchase intent", aimed at people "researching products and are actively considering buying a service or product like yours", according to its page About audience segments.

How a person enters a segment

Google does not publish its classification model, its signals' weights or how long a person stays in a segment. What it does disclose is the input: audiences "are determined by people's activity using Google products and third-party websites", according to the same help page. When the product launched on the Google Display Network (GDN) in 2013, Google's AdWords blog listed the buying signals as sites visited, ads clicked and recent conversions. Recent search queries were added once the segments reached Search in 2017, according to Search Engine Land.

Frequency matters, oddly. At launch, Search Engine Land reported that people who visited a category's sites too often were generally left out, on the logic that a daily visitor to an auto site probably already owns a car. Google's help page now says health segments are determined partly by "browsing pages more frequently", so the rule appears to vary by category.

The mechanics run in four steps. Google's systems score users against a fixed taxonomy of categories, such as autos, real estate or travel, with narrower subcategories beneath. People who cross an undisclosed threshold join the segment. An advertiser selects segments in an ad group. At auction time, Google checks whether the person behind the impression or query belongs to one. Jyll Saskin Gales, writing for Search Engine Land in June 2025, put the catalogue at "more than 1,000" segments.

Settings by campaign type

Where a segment can be used depends on the campaign. According to Google, in-market segments are available in Search, Shopping, Display, Video and Demand Gen campaigns. In Performance Max, segments act as audience signals: hints for Google's automation, which is free to serve ads to anyone it predicts will convert.

The decisive setting is Targeting versus Observation. Under Targeting, the ad group serves only to segment members, which narrows reach. Under Observation, reach is unchanged and the segment is simply reported, and optionally bid on. Google recommends Observation for Search and Shopping and Targeting for most Display campaigns. In a typical Search setup, a mattress retailer keeps its keywords, adds a "home furnishings" segment in Observation, and checks after several weeks whether segment members convert above the ad group average. Under manual bidding, a bid adjustment can then favour those searchers. Under Smart Bidding, the segment is one input among many.

Eligibility also changed recently. In December 2025, Google cut the minimum size for audience segments to 100 users across Search, Display and YouTube, down from 1,000 active users on Search.

Inside Display & Video 360 and other platforms

In Display & Video 360 (DV360), Google's enterprise demand-side platform (DSP), the same taxonomy appears as "Google audiences" alongside affinity segments. Historically, these Google audiences worked mainly on publishers using Google Ad Manager, as PPC Land noted when DV360 added a "Light TV Viewers" affinity segment in November 2018. In June 2021, PubMatic said DV360 buyers could target Google's affinity and in-market segments across PubMatic inventory where publishers opted in, using standard OpenRTB bid request fields. At the end of 2025, DV360 began reporting in-market as its own category in audience reports, so buyers could compare it directly with affinity.

Microsoft Advertising builds in-market audiences from "searches and clicks on Bing and page views on Microsoft services", according to its audience targeting page. Bing Ads opened them to all US advertisers in 2018 with more than 170 audiences, up from 14 in the pilot. By September 2020 there were 705 search in-market audiences in the US, and the product had reached France and Germany.

Amazon works from retail behaviour rather than research. Its DSP extended in-market audiences to 32 countries with unified definitions on November 4, 2025, although the article's own country lists total 34. On February 20, 2026, Amazon added in-market categories to display, video and audio campaigns, blending behavioural and contextual signals to reach shoppers who have shown interest in a category but not yet bought.

Meta never sold a product called in-market. Its closest equivalent, the "behaviours" and "interests" layer of detailed targeting, has been steadily dismantled in favour of Advantage+ automation.

Origin and evolution

The IAB Tech Lab's Audience Taxonomy codifies the wider category: its Tier 1 classes every segment as demographic, interest-based or purchase-intent based.

Google formalised the idea in November 2013 as "in-market buyers" on the GDN. In May 2017, Google announced in-market audiences for Search campaigns, and in November 2017 it began rolling out custom intent audiences, letting advertisers define their own intent from keywords and URLs. October 2019 brought the announcement of in-market and affinity audiences for Search campaigns. In September 2020, Google merged custom intent and custom affinity into custom audiences. In September 2021, its help documentation announced the move to "segments": in-market audience became in-market segment, remarketing became "your data", and custom audiences became custom segments.

Why it matters

In-market segments are the main way intent from search and shopping travels to channels where no query exists. A display banner or a YouTube pre-roll has no keyword attached, so the segment supplies the commercial signal. PPC Land's purchase intent explainer covers the wider family of intent measures, from survey scales to business-to-business (B2B) intent data.

The segments also carry Google's data advantage into the open web: a rival DSP cannot buy them and must assemble its own from third-party data or retailer records.

Limitations and disputes

Opacity is the standing complaint. Google discloses neither recency windows nor thresholds, and performance claims come from the platforms themselves. At the 2018 US rollout, Bing reported pilot click-through rates up to 28% higher and conversion rates up to 48% higher, but those figures were not independently audited.

Timing is a second problem. For quick purchases, the classification can lag the purchase itself. Saskin Gales cited contact lenses, often bought within 24 to 48 hours, and warned that by the time someone joins the segment "they will have probably already made their purchase."

Accuracy of behavioural profiles is contested more broadly. Field studies by Nico Neumann, Catherine Tucker and Timothy Whitfield, published in Marketing Science in 2019, found third-party broker segments identified gender no better than chance. Platform segments were not tested, and no outside audit of them has been published.

Privacy rules shape what the segments may contain. Google's restricted targeting policy excludes sensitive signals such as health, religion and sexual orientation from predefined audiences, and makes people under 18 ineligible for any personalised advertising. Since October 2020, housing, employment and credit advertisers in the US and Canada have been barred from targeting by gender, age, parental status, marital status or ZIP code; in-market segments, including employment, remain allowed, according to Google's FAQ. In the European Union, the Digital Services Act has prohibited profiling-based ads using special-category data or aimed at minors since February 17, 2024. From March 2024, Google said that under the Digital Markets Act it needed consent from users in the European Economic Area (EEA) to link its ad services with its other services, which limits the signals feeding segments there.

Not the same as

Affinity segments describe long-term interests and habits. An affinity "outdoor enthusiast" may never buy a tent; an in-market "camping equipment" member is shopping now.

Custom segments are built by the advertiser from keywords, URLs and apps. They can express intent the fixed taxonomy lacks, as covered in PPC Land's guide to custom intent.

Remarketing, now "your data", targets people who already interacted with the advertiser. In-market segments contain strangers.

Lookalike segments expand from an advertiser's seed list. Lookalike modeling finds people similar to existing customers, not people currently shopping.

Recent developments

The products around in-market segments are being rebuilt. Meta removed a further set of detailed targeting options on January 15, 2026, according to MediaPost, following a 2022 purge that PPC Land covered when Facebook removed sensitive detailed targeting options. On May 26, 2026, Google announced that standard Display campaigns would migrate into Demand Gen, with completion expected in 2027; Google said interest and demographic targeting remain available. DV360 is switching audience sizing from cookies to impressions.

The browser backdrop has settled. Google kept third-party cookies in Chrome, and in October 2025 it retired most Privacy Sandbox technologies, including the Topics API, which had been designed to pass interest categories without cross-site tracking. Amazon rebranded its DSP at unBoxed on September 29, 2026; AdExchanger reported a new DVA name, while launch coverage described DVA+ inside an Amazon Ads Agent platform, so naming remains unsettled as of October 2026.

Timeline

  • November 2013 - Google introduces "in-market buyers" on the Google Display Network.
  • May 22, 2014 - Google says in-market audiences cover 14 verticals and more than a dozen languages.
  • May 2017 - Google announces in-market audiences for Search campaigns.
  • November 2017 - Google begins rolling out custom intent audiences on the Display Network.
  • 2018 - Bing Ads opens in-market audiences to all US advertisers, with more than 170 audiences.
  • November 2018 - DV360 adds a Light TV Viewers affinity segment for Google Ad Manager inventory.
  • October 2019 - Google announces in-market and affinity audiences in Search campaign settings.
  • September 2020 - Google merges custom intent and custom affinity into custom audiences; Microsoft brings in-market audiences to France and Germany.
  • October 19, 2020 - Google's housing, employment and credit targeting restrictions take effect in the US and Canada.
  • June 17, 2021 - PubMatic and DV360 make Google affinity and in-market segments available on PubMatic inventory.
  • September 2021 - Google announces the rename of audiences to audience segments.
  • January 19, 2022 - Meta removes sensitive detailed targeting options.
  • February 17, 2024 - The EU Digital Services Act applies in full, including limits on profiling-based ads.
  • March 2024 - Google begins requiring EEA consent to link ad services under the Digital Markets Act.
  • October 17, 2025 - Google retires most Privacy Sandbox technologies, including Topics.
  • November 4, 2025 - Amazon DSP extends in-market audiences to 32 countries.
  • Late 2025 - DV360 reports in-market as a separate audience category; Google cuts segment minimums to 100 users.
  • January 15, 2026 - Meta removes further detailed targeting options.
  • February 20, 2026 - Amazon adds in-market categories to display, video and audio campaigns.
  • May 26, 2026 - Google announces the migration of Display campaigns into Demand Gen.
  • September 29, 2026 - Amazon rebrands its DSP products at unBoxed.

Summary

Who: Google operates the reference version in Google Ads and DV360; Microsoft Advertising and Amazon run their own. Advertisers and agencies select the segments, and publishers carrying Google audiences supply the inventory.

What: A platform-built group of people judged to be actively researching a purchase in a category, inferred from searches, browsing, clicks, app use and conversions, and used for targeting, observation or bidding.

When: Google launched "in-market buyers" in November 2013, brought them to Search from 2017, and renamed them segments in 2021. Amazon and Microsoft expanded their versions through 2025 and 2026.

Where: Search, Shopping, Display, Video, Demand Gen and Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads; DV360 line items; Microsoft search and audience campaigns; and Amazon display, video and audio campaigns.

Why: Advertisers want to reach people close to buying in channels without a search query. The approach is disputed because classification rules are undisclosed, signals can lag fast purchases, and privacy law and platform policy restrict what data can feed it.