Remarketing in Google Ads is a campaign that allows you to deliver your company's ads again to users who have visited your website in the past when they browse through Google or any Google partner websites.
Many people have experienced seeing ads for sites they have visited once appear on other websites, and this is known as remarketing ads.
Remarketing uses a function called "cookies" to temporarily store user data. This makes it possible to display your ad in the ad space of another website, even after the user has moved from your site to another.
In addition, this practice is referred to as ‘remarketing’ in Google Ads, but it is known as ‘retargeting’ on Yahoo! and Facebook Ads. Though the names may be different depending on the platform, it is safe to think of them as the same.
Types of Google Remarketing Ads
Let’s take a look at 5 of the different types of remarketing available on Google Ads.
*Google Display Network (GDN) refers to Google's display advertising distribution network, which allows advertisements to be distributed to various media affiliated with Google.
3 Reasons Why You Should Use Remarketing Ads
Let’s take a look at three reasons why you should use Google Remarketing Ads.
Expect high conversion rates
One of the biggest advantages of using remarketing campaigns is that it allows you to re-engage with users who have already visited your site. The fact that they have visited your site once means that they are likely to be interested in your products and services, thus you can expect a higher conversion rate compared to other users.
It is commonly said that about 90% of visitors to a website leave without making a purchase. There are various reasons for this behavior, such as wanting to compare with other products first or the user may simply just be gathering information and not yet ready to make a purchase. However, there are many cases where the desire to purchase increases as time passes, so remarketing ads are very effective in re-engaging such users.
Ideal for products with long buying cycle
Running remarketing ads is also an ideal method for products that have longer consideration periods. Some examples of these include expensive products and business-to-business services where internal decision-making takes time. Since these products tend to take a long time to be considered before purchase, it is often rare that a single contact will result in a conversion.
If you don't keep in touch with these users within a reasonable amount of time, they may forget about your business or purchase from a competitor's site instead. Thus, the remarketing campaign is a great way to stay connected with these users.
Targeted remarketing campaigns
Google Ads also makes it possible to deliver targeted remarketing campaigns. For example, instead of targeting all website visitors, it is possible to set up delivery to past visitors who have only visited a specific page or even exclude users who have already converted once.
It is also a good idea to set the delivery of your remarketing campaigns depending on the user's motivation, such as tracking users who have left the site within 3 days. This way, remarketing allows you to deliver targeted ads with content tailored to specific audiences based on past visitors to your website, resulting in higher cost-effectiveness.
Important Factors when using Remarketing Campaigns
Moving on, there are also three important factors to keep in mind when using remarketing campaigns.
Not suitable for developing new clients
While there are a lot of advantages in running a remarketing campaign, it is not designed to reach new customers. Because the feature requires users to visit your site at least once, new users can not be approached unless they’ve been in your site before.
However, without developing new clients, you will eventually run out of potential customers. It is necessary to consider measures to expand awareness among new users by operating display campaigns or banner ads. If you're looking into reaching a new audience, it would be best to run search ads instead.
May cause aversion towards users
Not every user who visits your website is a potential customer. If you repeatedly show ads to people who may not even reach the bottom of the sales funnel, they may develop an aversion towards your company. Even if a user does happen to be a sales lead, if they’re bombarded with ads they can also develop a bad impression of your company, causing the opposite desired effect.
So whenever you plan on running remarketing ads, take care not to cause discomfort to users by narrowing down the remarketing audiences to whom your ads are shown or adjusting the ad's display frequency.
Risk of Brand Damage and Ad Fraud
Google Ads Remarketing uses Google Display Network. GDN is Google's display ad delivery network and can be used to place ads on sites of a wide range of genres and scales. On the other hand, since ad placements cannot be completely specified, there are cases where ads are distributed to media that have little relevance to the content of the advertisement.
There are cases where ads may be displayed on sites that are offensive to public order and morals, leading to brand damage. In other cases, you may even become a victim of ‘ad fraud’ that manipulates the number of times your ad is viewed through an automated program.
Spider Labs provides a tool called ‘Spider AF’ that can help prevent such damages. Spider AF is an all-in-one anti-fraud tool that enables brand safety and ad fraud prevention. We also have a free trial, so please check here for details.
How to set up Google Ads Remarketing
Lastly, let's take a look at how to set up remarketing for Google Ads.
1. Implementing and installing a remarketing tag
To start using remarketing ads, you will first need to implement and set up a remarketing tag.
To access the remarketing tag, access your Google Ads account and open the admin screen. Click on ‘Tools and Settings’ located on the top of the screen and go to ‘Audience Manager’.
Select ‘Your data sources’ on the upper left corner of the screen and click on ‘set up tag’ in Google Ads Tag.
Once you are on the create data sources screen, select the first option ‘Only collect general website visit data to show ads to your website visitors’ then click ‘save and continue’.
Next, let’s install a tag on the website that you want to do remarketing on. There are three possible options you can use to install a tag.
2. Create a remarketing list
Next up, we will be making an audience list to use on remarketing.
To create a remarketing list, click on ‘Tools and Settings’ and then ‘audience manager’ located on the top of the screen. Then select ‘audience lists’ on the left side and click ‘+’.
Click on ‘website visitors’.
Then go to ‘audience list settings’. After you’ve finished setting up, click on ‘create audience’ to complete the setup for your remarketing list.
How to set up basic audience lists
・Audience Name: Put in a name that you could understand right away (ex. Visited site within 30 days, etc.)
・List Members: Basically select ‘visitors of a page’
・Visited Page: Enter the page URL that you want to target. If you want to target all pages on the site, enter the URL of the top page of the site
・Pre-fill options: Settings are optional
・Membership duration: Enter how many days the user will stay as an audience member. Enter ‘30’ if you want to target users who have visited the site within 30 days.
・Description: Optional
3. Create Campaign
Lastly, let’s create the remarketing campaign.
Select ‘campaign’ on the left side of the screen and click ‘+’.
Click on ‘new campaign’.
Select the goal that you would like to achieve for your remarketing campaign. The goal you choose here will be useful when setting up automation, so choose the one that best suits your company's goals.
Continue on to create a campaign type.
Any settings afterward will differ depending on what campaign type you choose. Select the remarketing list you created earlier in each targeting setting, and your remarketing ad will be all ready.
Summary
In this article, we went over Google Ads Remarketing, its types, and benefits, as well as important factors to take note of.
As we explained in this article, because Google Ads Remarketing can be displayed on a variety of different platforms via GDN, you need to be careful of the potential brand damage and ad fraud risks. When using remarketing ads, please try it out together with our anti-fraud tool, Spider AF.
