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Remarketing

Remarketing is advertising aimed at people who have already visited a store's website or app, or who are on its customer lists.

How it works

Google Ads now calls remarketing lists “your data segments”. The Google tag adds visitors by your rules, such as everyone who viewed a product or ordered. Customer Match lists add the store’s own customers.

A visitor stays on a list for 30 days by default, up to 540. A list serves ads only with at least 100 active users in the last 30 days. Visitors who deny ad personalisation in Consent Mode give remarketing no data.

In Search and Standard Shopping, you add a list in one of two modes. Targeting shows the ads only to people on the list. Observation keeps the same reach and allows bid adjustments; Smart Bidding also uses the list as a signal. You can exclude a list, such as recent buyers: see audience lists in Search and Shopping.

In Performance Max, your lists are only signals, and a campaign with a feed can run dynamic remarketing. Remarketing for online stores covers when a separate campaign still pays.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop’s Search and Shopping campaigns get 8,000 clicks and 300 orders a month. Its 30-day list of all visitors runs in Observation. Conversion rate on the list: 150 orders ÷ 2,400 clicks = 6.25%. For everyone else: 150 orders ÷ 5,600 clicks = 2.68%.

Not to be confused with

  • Dynamic remarketing — remarketing whose ads show the products a person viewed, taken from the feed.
  • Customer retention goal — makes a lapsed customer’s purchase worth more to bidding. Remarketing decides who sees the ads.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “The list converts at 6.25% against 2.68%, so remarketing brought 150 orders.” Right: these people had visited before and came back on their own. The split shows who buys more often. Only an incrementality test with a group that sees no ads shows what the ads added.
  • Wrong: “A visitors list in a Performance Max asset group makes it remarketing.” Right: the list is only a starting point; ads can reach people not on it.

Sources