Yes, Now You Can RLSA With GA (With Limitations)

In a long-awaited move, Google has brought remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) to Google Analytics.

Prior to this change, RLSA were the only remarketing audiences built from Google AdWords cookies as opposed to Analytics. Now advertisers can build and use remarketing lists of people who have visited their sites using many of the behavior metrics captured by the Google Analytics tag.

RLSA lets advertisers customize ads, exclude audiences, target a wider set of keywords, and modify bids when showing ads to site visitors when they search later on Google from the same browser. For example, you might want to exclude existing customers searching on certain brand terms, or raise bids and tailor ad copy for those who have abandoned carts.

There Is A Caveat

And now I’m going to put a bit of a damper on your excitement. All the great GA data isn’t actually available for RLSA. For privacy reasons, Google won’t allow advertisers to use GDN dimensions for age, gender or interests as well as a slew of Analytics demographics and technology dimensions such as language, location, operating system, browser, device category and others in remarketing lists for search ads.

Also to keep in mind, RLSA lists need at least 1,000 cookies before they can be used to tailor search ads — again for privacy.

You’ll need to enable data collection for Remarketing in your GA account to get started.

Check out columnists Rebekah Schelfhout on How To Get More From Your RSLA Campaigns and Lori Weiman on 4 Hidden Treasures For RSLA Campaigns for some tips on using and managing RLSAs.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.