Create Dynamic Remarketing Campaigns in Google Ads: A Guide (2024)

Advertising on Google Shopping is the go-to method for merchants from any and every industry. It involves complicated steps requiring extensive knowledge, creativity and dedication to create and maintain.

The responsibility of simplifying such processes falls on the shoulders of researchers and writers. To fulfill our responsibility for the same, we have brought to you a well-sought-out guide on how you can create dynamic remarketing campaigns in Google ads.

You might have already heard of what remarketing is. If not, remarketing enables advertisers to reach all those customers who visited their website previously. These customers can be those who have browsed a product page, added products to the cart, or have performed a potential action that may have resulted in a successful conversion.

However, for those merchants who have potential customers that often forget to complete the entire purchase, dynamic remarketing is the right choice.

What is Google Dynamic Remarketing?

Dynamic Remarketing allows you to reach customers who have already visited your website and show them personalized product ads for products they have already seen. It is a gentle reminder to purchase the product they previously liked.

In essence, Google creates personalized ads on your behalf for every individual visitor who has browsed your website in the past and ‘remarkets’ it to them.

Dynamic remarketing ads are tailored to entice each customer. They include images of the products they browsed, prices, and descriptions.

Google allows advertisers to customize the ads as per their requirements. The only task that you, as an advertiser, must undertake is to provide Google with an optimized product data feed that Google will utilize to reach out and retarget potential customers.

Google uses cookies to track users who visit a site on the Google display network. It cross-verifies whether the same user has visited your website in the past. If they have, Google determines whether that customer belongs to your remarketing list. If yes, Google shows them an ad of your products that they previously clicked on and engaged with.

Dynamic Remarketing Campaigns vs Standard Remarketing Campaigns

A remarketing campaign utilizes website visitors’ information to retarget them and show them your product ads. The difference lies in what these ads contain.

From a customer’s perspective, in a standard remarketing campaign, all users who have previously engaged with your website’s content will be shown standard ads they might not have seen before.

But with a dynamic remarketing approach, your ads will become a lot more personalized based on the pages and products the users viewed when they were on your website.

In a standard remarketing campaign, you must alter every ad manually and set it up all on your own.

On the other hand, dynamic remarketing is much simpler. You can set up a one-time template. Google will automatically update the image and product information based on the customer they’re displaying it to without any manual intervention from your end.

The principal advantage of dynamic remarketing in contrast to standard remarketing, is targeting. Advertisers can target individual products and show them the ads they want to see. Additionally, using ad creatives, advertisers can automate ad creation with ad templates. This point-blank targeting and quick ad creation trump dynamic remarketing over standard remarketing.

What Are The Benefits Of Google Dynamic Remarketing Campaigns

Dynamic remarketing can have several benefits. Apart from a one-time set up, dynamic remarketing campaigns can significantly uplift your campaigns by:

• Improving Conversion Rate, click-through rates and ROI.
• Lowering the average CPC.
• Reminding users about the brand and thus boosting brand awareness.
• Increasing customer retention and brand loyalty.
• Reducing cart abandonment.
• Auto-optimization of layouts, bids and targeting which decreases manual work.
• Making it simple to create and customize ad templates.

At the core, all the benefits simply can be put into a single sentence:

Dynamic remarketing lowers manual effort and increases ad performance.

Prerequisites To Create Dynamic Remarketing Ads

Before you can make the most of dynamic remarketing campaigns, you must do some prep work.

Link Google Ads and Analytics Account

Before you begin, you must first link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account. You can do this on your Google Analytics account itself.

1. On GA4’s admin page, you can find Google Ads links under Product links.
2. Click on Link, and choose the Google Ads account you want to link.
3. Next, click on Confirm.
4. Review your settings and submit them.

All your Google Ads account data will be available on your GA4-linked account within 48 hours.

On your GA4 account, you can now create audiences, which will automatically be sent to all your linked accounts. You can utilize these audiences in your shared library in Google Ads for your remarketing campaigns.

Product feed

You can use the product feed you created for shopping campaigns or create a new one customized for remarketing campaigns (We suggest creating a unique feed with remarketing in mind!)

You must upload this feed to your Google merchant center account.

💡Shopify merchants can use third-party apps like AdNabu to sync their data directly to the Google merchant center. AdNabu also offers AI optimization and other features that can help you avoid product disapprovals and feed rejections.

✍️Note: Ensure your feed file contains all the necessary and relevant product data to avoid feed rejection.

Set Up Dynamic Remarketing Ads (Responsive Display Ads)

Responsive display ads are flexible ads that can automatically adjust their size, format and appearance, consequently to fit the available ad space. These ads are specially crafted for Google dynamic remarketing campaigns.

They’re a part of the dynamic remarketing to allow customizations across different devices, websites and users based on the requirements.

💡You can also set up these ads as the last step of your campaign creation.

Responsive display ads can be created on Google Ads too. This help article provides step-by-step instructions.

Your ad will require:

• A short headline
• A long headline
• A description of the product
• Business name
• Final URL (landing page URL)

✍️Note: Your ad approval might take over 7 days.

Dynamic Remarketing Tag

You need to install the Dynamic Remarketing Tag on every page of your website.

This tag essentially communicates with Google and tells Google what shoppers are looking at on your website. You must add custom parameters (such as product category, value, visitor age, etc.) in the tag to provide more detailed information to Google to each of these pages on your site.

Google matches the tag’s custom parameter ID to each item ID you provide in your product feed. It determines what information should be displayed to particular customers, which makes it ‘dynamic’ rather than standard.

By installing the tag on each page, Google can quickly determine which product users are looking at which categories and different pages on your website too.

We strongly recommend that advertisers who are not well versed with coding and JavaScript, hire a professional developer.

✍️Note: You can check your remarketing tags installation status using Google Tag Assistant.

How To Set Up Your Google Ads Dynamic Remarketing Tag in Google Tag Manager

You can set up your dynamic remarketing tag on your Google Tag Manager. Follow these steps:

Step 1. On Google Tag Manager, under the workspace tab, you must locate ‘Tags’ on your left-panel. Click on ‘New’ button on your right to set up a new tag.

Step 2. You must now select ‘Tag Configuration’ and then click on Google Ads’.

Step 3. Next, you must look for the ‘Google Remarketing Tag’ and click on it.

Step 4. You can find your conversion ID in your Google Ads account. Once you’ve entered your conversion ID, click the checkbox next to ‘Send dynamic remarketing event data.’

To get your conversion ID from Google Ads:

1. Navigate to the ‘Tools and Settings’ tab.
2. Under the ‘Shared Library’ menu, look for ‘Audience Manager’, click on it.
3. On the left side panel, you can now find ‘Your Data Sources’, and under ‘Google Ads Tag’ you can scroll down to locate ‘Tag setup.’
4. For the last step click on ‘Use Google Tag Manager.’ and here you can find your ‘Conversion ID’ and copy it.

Step 5 Choose the variable for event name, event value and event items from the list by selecting the symbol next to it.

Step 6 For the final step, set up a trigger for the tag to fire (record data) anytime a specific event occurs. Finally, click on ‘Save’.

You have successfully created a tag. This tag can help you create an audience list.

Additionally, if you are a Shopify merchant, remarketing apps like AdNabu’s offer simplified ways to create, set up and automate this entire process for you using their app.

You can read more about how it works here.

Dynamic Remarketing Campaign Creation

Now that you have all the requirements fulfilled, it is time to begin setting up your dynamic remarketing campaign.

Step 1. Log on to your Google Ads account, and on the left side panel, locate the ‘Campaigns’ symbol ‘📢’ and click on it.

Step 2. Click on the ‘Overview’ tab and locate the ‘New Campaign’ button.

See Also

The Ultimate Guide to Remarketing in 2023 - Creatopy

Step 3. Either you can select ‘New Campaign’ or click on Resume campaign draft, and select the campaign you want to publish.

If you’re setting up a new campaign, pick Sales, Leads, Website traffic, Brand awareness, or Reach as your campaign goals. Click on next.

Step 4. Select ‘Performance Max’ as your campaign type, and enter the URL for your business website. Name your campaign and click continue.

Step 5. If you have a Google Merchant Center account, select the account. If you do not have a GMC account, you can add a dynamic ads feed.

Step 6. Since your website already has all the required remarketing tags, your campaign will automatically activate dynamic remarketing.

Step 7. Set up all the campaign settings like the bid, budget, assets, etc. Review your campaign settings and you can successfully publish it!

And you’re all set!

Common Issues In Google Ads Dynamic Remarketing

Even if you have set up your campaign and followed all the steps, some hiccups might pop up here and there.

Fear not! We have compiled a list of common issues and their solutions that might show up while you’re setting up your dynamic remarketing campaigns for Google ads.

Restrictive targeting

Alert message: Your ad group’s ads aren’t reaching people

What this means: Your ad group is too restrictive.

If you have set up a remarketing list manually, or if you have layered different retargeting filters or exclusions, it will significantly lowers the number of people you can reach.

In other words, if you target a very small region–this error can show up as a way to inform you that your ads are not able to reach many people. It can become difficult to showcase these ads to limited audiences.

How to fix it: Instead of layering different filters, try changing your campaign settings to accommodate more audiences. Additionally, you can remove certain filters exclusions and expand the region where you’re advertising to combat this error effectively.

Disapproved Ads

Alert message: All ads in your ad group are disapproved

What this means: Google has disapproved all the ads in your ad group and ads can’t be displayed till the policy team approves it.

This can occur due to inaccurate, incomplete or irrelevant product information uploaded to Google. Additionally, not following proper formats, disregarding Google’s policies or other errors within your Google Ads or Google Merchant Center account can also lead to similar issues. If your ads contain inappropriate content, violate local laws or are misleading or harmful in any way, Google will disapprove your ads too.

How to fix it: Thankfully, Google will send you detailed information about precisely what has caused the ads in your ad group to be disapproved. Based on this data, you can make the required ad changes and send them for review again.

Bids too low

Alert message: The bids in your ad group are too low to show your ads

What this means: Low bids are affecting your ad placements and clicks.

Budget and bids determine where your ads will be placed and how often. In competitive landscapes, it is important to bid higher to ensure the visibility of your ads. Additionally, lower bids will also end up costing more in the long run, as the ads will cost nearly the same but won’t receive enough clicks due to placement.

How to fix it: Try to increase the bid you place based on the industry you’re in.

Not enough people targeted

Alert message: Your ad group targeting isn’t reaching enough people

What this means: Your remarketing list doesn’t include enough people that can be targeted.

This error is similar to the ‘Restrictive targeting’ error. It can come up when there aren’t enough people that can be targeted on your audience list. For instance, retargeting customers might not be enough since there will be a very limited number of people on the list if you have just begun to advertise your products.

How to fix it: A simple and easy fix for this error is to start including more people in your list. Increase the number of audiences in your list, revamp your efforts for ad group targeting and widen the scope of people that your ads can be remarketed to.

Disabled remarketing lists

Alert message: Your ads can’t run because your ad group targets or excludes one or more disabled audience lists.

What this means: Your audience list contains audiences that are no longer available to or relevant to you.

Audience lists are used to retarget potential customers that might be interested in your website or products. There are certain times when the list of these audiences might have become redundant to you, or might have expired (the audience list maximum membership duration is only 540 days).

When you have created an audience list during promotional offers including limited edition product advertising, those lists will no longer be available once the promotion ends.

How you can fix it: Remove the inactive audiences, otherwise ads will no longer be able to run. Ensure that anytime you deactivate any list, you remove it from all associated campaigns to avoid this in the future.

Audience list not big enough

Alert message Your ad group is targeting audience lists with fewer than 100 active users.

What this means: A minimum of 100 active users in the last 30 days must be in your audience list.

If your audience list has less than 100 active users in the last 30 days, Google will not showcase ads. Additionally, if your audience list has fulfilled the requirement but still shows the alert message, you might want to remove the existing filters and exclusions to widen the audience reach.

How you can fix it: If your audience list has less than 100 active users, you might have to wait for a bit and accumulate more users before you can start remarketing. Additionally, you can remove any unnecessary filters that might cause the number of users in your list to go down.

Conclusion

Dynamic remarketing campaigns are highly effective in improving your online presence and thus increasing your brand’s awareness. As a result, you will begin to notice more customers returning to finish the purchases they left midway. Your customers will undoubtedly turn more loyal as you understand them better and show them what they want to see.

FAQs

What is Google Ads Dynamic remarketing?

Dynamic Remarketing on Google allows merchants to provide customized ads for their customers who have previously visited their website. These ads show products, features, and services that the customers have previously viewed. Additionally, these ads are auto-generated by Google and can be used for retargeting efforts.

How does dynamic remarketing work?

Dynamic remarketing utilizes a product feed and a remarketing tag placed on each page of your website. This tag is set up to collect data based on customer behavior, specifically events such as pages visited or products viewed, products added to cart, etc.

This data is matched with the product data in your feed to create customized ads which are shown to customers that have previously visited your website but left without purchasing. These ads are displayed across other websites across the Google Display Network.

What are the prerequisites for setting up dynamic remarketing?

To set up a dynamic remarketing campaign, you require an active Google Ads account linked to Google Analytics, an updated product feed, a remarketing tag on all the pages of your website and audience lists which can directly be extracted from Google Analytics while creating your campaign.

What are the benefits of dynamic remarketing?

Merchants use dynamic remarketing to target customers that have previously visited their website but left without making a conversion. These ads offer several benefits such as: personalized ad experiences for users, increased CTC, CTR and ROI, minimal manual intervention due to automated ad creation, and builiding brand loyalty, increasing customer retention and allowing for a more fulfilling user experience.

What is the difference between dynamic remarketing and standard remarketing?

Remarketing refers to showing ads to audiences that have previously visited your website. Under standard remarketing, merchants showcase generalized product ads to all their audiences.

Dynamic remarketing ads offer a more personalized approach as the data recorded on your website allows Google to show customers the specific products and pages that they had been scrolling through while on your website.

This personalization becomes a lot more effective and offers many other benefits too.

How do I add the dynamic remarketing tag to my website?

You can add the dynamic remarketing tag using Google Tag Manager. You can also insert the code snipped (available on Google Ads) into your website’s code. However, since each page requires a tag, it is suggested you utilize Google Tag Manager or a third-party app to simplify the process.

What are some best practices for dynamic remarketing ads?

Since dynamic remarketing ads are different for each user, it is important to maintain unique and consistent branding across all different ads. You must use simple, clear call-to-actions, test different variations of an ad and tailor different ads to different audience segments.

Setting up a frequency cap might prove to be helpful in avoiding the overuse of ads.

Lastly, you should stay updated with Google’s latest policies and changes.

How do I measure the success of my dynamic remarketing campaigns?

Google Analytics and Google Ads will provide detailed analytics for each of your ad campaigns. This includes metrics such as the CTR, Conversion rates, ROI and Engagement Rate.

These metrics will help you to determine the further course of action and ad performance. Using different marketing strategies might prove to be useful in optimizing your ad campaigns.