"Use the Power of Google Ads Remarketing and Increase Your Revenue"

1. What is Google Ads Remarketing?
2. What is the difference between “normal” and remarketing campaigns?
3. What opportunities arise for companies through Google Ads remarketing?
4. How do Remarketing Campaigns work and what should be considered?
5. What types of Google Remarketing Ads are there?
6. How is Google Ads Remarketing set up?
7. How can remarketing campaigns be optimized on Google Ads?
8. What tools are useful for Google Remarketing Campaigns?
9. Conclusion: Use Google Ads Remarketing (DSGVO compliant) as long as possible

You all know this – visited a website once, looked at a product and then left the website. Ever since, this product in the form of an ad has been following you on various websites for weeks, even if you have already decided for the competitor.

This example describes a failed use of remarketing, also known as retargeting. Remarketing can and should be an important part of your marketing strategy by increasing sales. In this article, you will learn what remarketing is exactly and how to use it effectively. The focus is on Google, the world's most used search engine.

What is Google Ads Remarketing?

This is referring to readdressing users via Google Adwords who have already been on your website, used your app, watched your YouTube videos or interacted with your YouTube channel. People are expected to have a higher likelihood of conversion (i.e. these users are more likely to buy or perform another important action for you) because they have shown interest in your brand through their behavior.

For this reason, advertisers want to reach this target group again through remarketing ads and persuade them to purchase or the like.

What is the difference between “normal” and remarketing campaigns?

While standard campaigns target all users, as long as the remarketing lists are not excluded, remarkeying campaigns are only aimed at remarketing lists. These typically have more aggressive bids to reach the target group with a higher probability.

It is recommended to use different ads for readdressing than for prospecting in order to avoid ad fatigue, also known as Ad Fatigue. Possible are customized texts and creatives that put your products and unique selling propositions more in the foreground, or special offers that are supposed to act as an extra purchase incentive.

What opportunities arise for companies through Google Ads remarketing?

With remarketing ads, you can pick up potential customers at different points in the customer journey. If you manage to play the right message at the right time, you have a chance to get the target group to complete a purchase, make an in-app action, fill out a form or the like.

Don't stop at addressing all website visitors – the users who have viewed a product page or other important page, put something in the shopping cart or even entered payment data but have not yet completed their purchase are even more valuable in terms of engagement.

In the B2B context, you could readdress the people who have downloaded your whitepaper, watched the product video or tested a demo version of the product. If you have products that people might need again later, or complementary items, you can target your converters through separate campaigns or ad groups, however possibly only after a certain amount of time in order not to address the users too often unnecessarily.

How do Remarketing Campaigns work and what should be considered?

Currently, the recognition of the desired target group primarily works through the use of cookies. If someone visits your website and agrees to the tracking via the cookie banner, the browser stores a small text file on the user's device.

However, support for third-party cookies will expire in 2023 by the most popular browser Chrome worldwide which will limit the capabilities of remarketing in Google. The first-party cookies remain, however, and the tech giant is working on new solutions such as Topics.

Furthermore, it is important to ensure that remarketing is executed in compliance with data protection regulations. Among other things, this includes the already mentioned cookie banner, which contains the necessary information and offers users the possibility, if undesired, to object to complete tracking or only tracking related to certain types of cookies (statistics, marketing and others).

Through the technical set-up (e.g. in the Google Tag Manager) it is necessary to ensure that no tags are actually fired if a person does not agree to the tracking. For the creation of such conditions, the use of a consent management system in addition to the tag manager is advisable.

By the way, if the banner is placed inconspicuously at the bottom of the website, where users ignore it, they must not be tracked either.

While the cookie banner must deliver certain data protection information, users must also be able to inform themselves in your data protection declaration. Detailed information on the potential additional necessary steps and recommendations on wording can be obtained from legal experts.

Google and other platforms usually only point out to you that the privacy policy may need to be adjusted and provide general tips.

What types of Google Remarketing Ads are there?

With regard to the data source, Google distinguishes between two types of remarketing ads: those that use data from the Google Ads Remarketing pixel, and those that are list-based.

The first group has found a much broader application - here it is about recognition and addressing of users after an online interaction, such as visiting your website or installing your app.

Especially in the e-commerce sector, one often goes a step further and likes to use the dynamic remarketing via Google Ads. This means that when users surf the internet after an interaction, they may not only see one of their generic ads, but also ads with the exact products or services, such as a pair of red shoes or a package trip to Costa Rica, that they have viewed.

For the use of dynamic remarketing, you need a powerful feed with product data and must also integrate the general website tag and the event snippet for dynamic remarketing.

List-based remarketing ads can be delivered by uploading hashed customer data such as email addresses and/or phone numbers into the Google Ads account (customer match function). If Google can match this and the list is large enough, it offers readdressing or even exclusion of matched users. In addition, Google subsequently automatically creates a list of similar target groups, which are also well suited for targeting and observing.

Apart from the data source, remarketing ads can also be distinguished by type just like campaigns. Remarketing Google Display ads are especially common, aiming to remind potential customers of your products or services and inspire them to make a purchase while they are on other websites. Other types include search ads including dynamic search ads, video, shopping-, discovery and app ads.

How is Google Ads Remarketing set up?

Readdressing requires the remarketing lists. You can create these directly in Google Ads, import them from Universal Analytics (UA) or Google Analytics 4 (GA4) or upload them. Ideally, you use all options and find the most successful target groups.

The creation of lists in Google Ads requires the setup of the Google Ads Remarketing tag (see step 1) in addition to the Conversion linking tag (Conversion linker) and Conversion-Tracking tags, for example via Google Analytics 360 (GA360) (GTM). If you want to access the Google Analytics data, you need to create the Google Analytics tags for page views (Page-View-Tag) for UA or Configuration-Tag for GA4 and event tags and link Google Analytics with Google Ads.

1. Create Google Ads Tag

1.1 Log in to your Google Ads account.

1.2 Navigate to Tools and Settings at the top right → Shared Library → Audience Management → Your data sources.

1.3 Click on “Set up tag” under “Google Ads Tag”, if the tag is not already set up.

1.4 For standard remarketing data (no dynamic remarketing) select the first point under “Remarketing”, and then click on “Create and continue”.

1.5 Next, select how you want to implement the Google Ads tag: insert yourself, send by email to webmaster or insert with GTM. The code belongs in the head area of every page of your website (website tag) or on the pages that are relevant for dynamic remarketing (event snippet).

Important: The placeholders in the event snippet should be filled dynamically by your developers; there is a guide here.

2. Create remarketing lists in Google Ads

2.1 Log in to your Google Ads account.

2.2 Navigate to Tools and Settings → Shared Library → Audience Management → Segments → blue plus symbol and choose between the options “Website visitors”, “App users”, “YouTube”, “Customer list” or “Custom combination”.

2.3 Set a Condition, by which the segmentation takes place (e.g. website visitors → visitor of a page → Correspond at least one rule group → Page URL contains product).

2.4 Select the option “Prefill segment with users of the last 30 days who have complied with the rules”, to fill the segment directly with the (first) cookies.

2.5 Enter the number of days that determines how long users should stay in this target group segment. For smart bidding strategies, the longest duration of 540 days is recommended.

2.6 Click on “Create segment”.

Tip: Also use the options “Custom Segments” (for Display, Discovery, Gmail and Video campaigns) and “Combined Segments” (e.g. all website visitors except converters) to target even more relevant target groups.

Once the necessary lists are in, a remarketing campaign can be created and targeted on the list(s).

3. Create Remarketing Campaign

3.1 Log in to your Google Ads account.

3.2 Navigate to All Campaigns → Campaigns → Blue plus symbol → New Campaign → Create campaign setup without goal and select a campaign type.

3.3 Select an additional purpose if necessary and click on “Continue”.

3.4 Depending on the campaign type, you will be asked to enter the website (Display), select the targets (Search) or enter similar details.

3.5 Name the campaign, select locations, languages, exclude content (Display), bidding strategy and budget. Depending on the campaign type, there are more Campaign Settings to choose from.

3.6 Under the point “Targeting”, you determine which specific target groups should be addressed. You can find remarketing lists under Audience segments → Browse → Previous interactions with your company → Website visitors. Select, deselect further settings like “Optimized targeting” and on “Continue”.

3.7 Create ad(s) and click on “Create campaign”.

Important: The active ads will only be shown when the selected target group segment is large enough. In the Google Display Network, for example, 100 active users are required within the last 30 days, in the search network, for YouTube and Discovery ads, on the other hand, 1,000.

How can remarketing campaigns be optimized on Google Ads?

Even before activation, remarketing campaigns can be optimized through the appropriately selected settings. For example, if the campaign is running in the Display network, and especially if the selected target group segments count only a few thousand users, it is worth defining in the “Frequency Management” area how often the same user sees your ad. In this way, you can counteract ad fatigue.

The “Exclude Elements” (for Display network) area should mark the labels or content in whose environment your ads may not be displayed. Google will try to avoid these, but cannot guarantee that all corresponding content will be excluded.

When the campaign is already active and some traffic has been purchased, optimization based on the initial results is possible. However, at this point, it is advisable not to make too drastic decisions before the campaign starts and really meaningful data is available.

Check the delivery in the Display network to find out where exactly your ads were displayed. Navigate to Campaign → Content → Where Ads were Delivered. Is the content relevant and appropriate? Are the placements just gaming apps? The unnecessary stuff can be selected and excluded from the campaign under “Edit”.

Tip: You can exclude all apps (even ahead of time) by going to Keywords and Targeting → Categories for mobile apps, Excluding → + Add Excluding Category for Mobile Apps → Excluding Mobile Apps for Campaign Level → select campaigns if not already done → all apps. → OK.

Regardless of which network the ads were delivered in, check how the selected target groups perform compared to each other. Click on Campaign → Targets → Show Table → select the Campaign View, if not done yet.

Are there clear winners or low performers? Should a target group be addressed more intensively or paused based on the results? Depending on the bidding strategy, the intensity of the approach can be influenced by the bids or bid adjustments. Alternatively, you can transfer individual target groups into separate campaigns.

Also regardless of the network – observe the performance of your ads (e.g., click rate, conversion rate) under Campaign → Ads and Extensions → Ads, ideally over time. Does it leave something to be desired or deteriorate from week to week? Then it's time for ad optimization - adjustment or replacement of individual assets or whole ads.

What tools are useful for Google Remarketing Campaigns?

If you have decided on Google Ads' smart bidding strategies and the number of remarketing campaigns is manageable, you don't need any additional software. For managing daily budgets dependent on performance you can use the automatic rules of Google Ads under Tools and Settings → Bulk-Actions or also use scripts.

This can also be applied to automatically controlling ads (pause, activate), target groups (pause, activate, adjust bids) and placements (pause, activate, adjust bids).

In larger accounts with many data, the use of popular SEA Tools for these and other purposes like monitoring and extra insights can be helpful. On the software review platform OMR Reviews, you can find more interesting products with reviews that can contribute to the scaling-up of marketing activities.

For the creation or editing of remarketing creatives, usual image editing programs with free offers like for example. Canva Pro are suitable.

Conclusion: Use Google Ads Remarketing (DSGVO compliant) as long as possible

The complexity of setting up and optimizing Google Ads remarketing campaigns is manageable, provided advertisers are informed about the range of setting options and best practices. For this reason, and because of the expected higher likelihood of conversion with remarketing target groups, it is recommended to definitely test this feature (if in accordance with the guidelines).

Although the remarketing possibilities are already limited by different browsers and in 2023 also by Chrome, it currently represents an effective tool in Search Engine Advertising including Display.

In the best case scenario, complement these measures with prospecting, remarketing and re-engagement also on other ad platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Meta, Outbrain & Co. and, if possible, through your CRM system to increase your reach and not depend on a single platform.