How to maximize your Google Ads remarketing campaigns

Remarketing campaigns can drive significant results when executed effectively.

This article explores advanced strategies for setting up and optimizing your remarketing efforts for greater profitability and long-term success.

Go beyond the basic remarketing setup

By default, Google Analytics creates an “All Users” audience for website visitors over the past 30 days. 

While this basic audience may be useful for beginners, setting up advanced audiences can significantly improve campaign performance in the long term.

Here are audiences to consider testing:

• Pre-built templates in GA4: Ready to use or customizable to fit your specific needs.
• Different timeframes: Instead of simply 30-day website visitors, test 10-day, 60-day, 90-day, or 180-day audiences based on your industry and website traffic.
• 365-day audiences: Ideal for remarketing annual products or services, such as trips, holidays, or Black Friday deals, to previous customers.
• Page-specific visitors: Retarget users who visited key pages, like pricing, by setting up “Page location” contains “your specific URL.”
• Converted audiences: Target users for other products or exclude them from campaigns based on completed purchases or form submissions.
• New visitors: Show ads only to new users, excluding repeat visitors.
• Traffic sources: Use audiences from other platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or large newsletter lists, by applying Templates > Acquisition > First user source, campaign, or medium.

Additional advanced options include:

• Inactive users: Retarget users who haven’t been active for a set timeframe (e.g., 7 days), or delay ads until specific events, like a free trial expiration.
• Session duration: Target users who spent significant time on your website (e.g., over 1 minute) to exclude low-interest audiences.

Dig deeper: How to combine Google Ads with other channels to retarget, nurture and convert

There are three primary campaign types for targeting remarketing audiences. Let’s explore best practices for setting them up and optimizing their performance.

1. Search remarketing

Setup best practices

You can target the same remarketing audiences you’ve set up in GA4, often called RLSA (remarketing lists for search ads).

To avoid overlap, separate your search remarketing campaigns from standard search campaigns that don’t target a remarketing audience. 

The simplest approach is to create a search remarketing campaign using the same and/or different keywords while excluding that remarketing audience from your standard search campaigns.

In search remarketing, you can test broader keywords, including:

• Broad match terms.
• Review-related queries.
• Competitor names. 

Since these users have already visited your site, broader targeting carries less risk.

For ad creative, you can either reuse existing ads or test unique copy tailored to search remarketing. 

Choose what performs best. If using unique ads, consider adding more selling points and testimonials. Also, test different landing pages, coupons, or special deals.

For bidding, test manual bidding, max conversions, or target CPA – especially if the campaign generates a high number of conversions. 

Even with higher CPCs, maximizing conversions can be worthwhile, as these users are already familiar with your brand.

Optimizing search remarketing campaigns

Optimization follows the same principles as standard search campaigns: 

• Test different ad copy.
• Adjust ad group variations.
• Experiment with new keywords.
• Pause underperforming ones.
• Add negative keywords. 

However, avoid directly mirroring changes from your standard search campaigns. What works there won’t necessarily work in search remarketing.

You can swap out audiences as needed, but otherwise, optimization remains similar to standard search. 

Regular adjustments are essential. Don’t leave it on autopilot.

Dig deeper: How to boost PPC retargeting efficiency with an RFM analysis

2. Display remarketing

Setup best practices

When targeting different remarketing audiences, use separate ad groups or campaigns. 

Avoid grouping drastically different audiences together or expanding them with “optimized targeting.”

For ads, you can reuse copy from search or banner ads or test unique messaging specific to display remarketing. Choose what delivers the best results. 

With remarketing banner ads, include your logo and branding to ensure immediate recognition. Even if users don’t click, the impressions still provide branding value.

For high-traffic websites, consider testing three separate remarketing campaigns:

• Desktop-only.
• Tablet-only.
• Mobile-only. 

Combining all devices in one campaign often results in mobile traffic consuming the most clicks and budget. 

Instead of blocking mobile traffic entirely or reducing bids, testing a separate mobile campaign may be more effective. Mobile clicks – especially from in-app ads – are often accidental or irrelevant. 

For bidding, test manual CPC to control volume and spend or use Maximize Conversions to stop showing ads to users who don’t convert quickly. 

Brands with larger budgets aiming for long-term visibility may benefit from manual bidding to maximize touchpoints and reinforce brand presence.

Be cautious with Maximize Clicks bidding. This strategy may favor high-click placements, such as mobile games, where accidental clicks can waste budget.

Optimizing display remarketing campaigns

Optimization follows the same principles as standard display campaigns. 

Regularly review placements – especially apps, games, celebrity gossip, quizzes, and entertainment sites – to prevent wasted spend on users who aren’t in the right mindset for your product or service. 

If mobile traffic dominates the budget, consider blocking it or running separate device-targeted campaigns.

Continuously test ads to determine which ones drive the most conversions or relevant clicks. 

If an ad underperforms with a remarketing audience, replace it. 

Avoid leaving display remarketing campaigns on autopilot. Ongoing adjustments are key to maintaining effectiveness.

Dig deeper: How to make your display campaigns profitable

3. Video remarketing

Setup best practices

Video remarketing campaigns follow a similar setup and optimization process as display remarketing campaigns. 

Use separate ad groups or campaigns for different remarketing audiences. Don’t combine them with other audiences.

For ads, you can use generic branded videos or specific product/service-based videos tailored to the user’s recent activity. 

If producing new video ads is challenging, brands often repurpose existing TV or streaming ads. 

For lower budgets, you can create simple videos using Google Ads’ built-in tool or third-party tools like Canva. 

These videos can now be hosted directly in Google Ads without needing YouTube.

Video ad campaigns offer various subtypes and bidding strategies. 

For remarketing, the simplest option is Video Views, which supports skippable in-stream ads, in-feed ads, and Shorts ads using CPV (cost per view) bidding. 

This is the easiest way to retarget past website visitors or YouTube channel viewers.

For larger budgets, consider Video Efficient Reach, which allows CPM (cost per thousand impressions) bidding and supports unskippable ads. 

Brands focused on reach may also use Non-Skippable Reach if that format aligns with their goals.

When setting up the campaign, consider disabling TV screen targeting unless you have a large brand and budget. 

Most advertisers prefer engagement beyond just branding, so blocking TV placements can help allocate spend more effectively.

The Drive Conversions subtype for video campaigns is transitioning to Demand Gen in early 2025. 

If you don’t want to expand into Gmail and Discovery ads, it’s best to focus on Video Views for remarketing.

Optimizing video remarketing campaigns

Video remarketing follows the same optimization principles as display remarketing and non-remarketing video campaigns. 

Regularly review and block irrelevant placements, including:

• Video placements. 
• YouTube channels.
• Topics.
• Apps.
• Entertainment content. 

Video ads often waste budget on kids’ videos, unrelated apps, or entertainment channels. Make sure to continuously block irrelevant placements

If mobile traffic dominates the budget with little to no results, consider blocking it to improve campaign efficiency. 

Advanced remarketing strategies

For advanced users, enhance remarketing by layering audience targeting with relevant placements, topics, and keywords simultaneously. 

This ensures your remarketing ads appear to past website visitors while they browse specific websites, YouTube channels, or content related to your targeted topics or keywords.

For example, if you offer retirement planning services, you can target previous website visitors while they visit financial or retirement-related websites or view relevant topics. 

This strategy works for both display and video campaigns. 

You can also handpick high-authority financial or retirement websites and layer them with your remarketing audience for more precise targeting.

It’s important to note that adding a remarketing audience to a Performance Max campaign is not true remarketing. 

Performance Max uses remarketing audiences as a signal – a starting point to find similar users – rather than exclusively targeting past visitors. 

It will expand beyond that audience based on Google’s machine learning.

By leveraging advanced remarketing and optimization techniques, you can achieve significantly better results than default remarketing strategies.

Dig deeper: From search to social: Retargeting organic traffic with video strategies