About remarketing
Remarketing lets you re-engage users based on their behavior in your app or on your site. When users fit the behavioral profile for an audience (for example, Reached Level 9), they are added to that audience and are eligible to see ads related to that earlier behavior.
You can create audiences in your Google Analytics 4 properties from any combination of dimensions, metrics, and events (for example, Android users who triggered in_app_purchase events).
Analytics also automatically creates two audiences:
- Purchasers: Users who have purchased an app, made an in-app purchase, or made a website purchase
- All users: Users who have installed your app or initiated sessions on your website
When you link Analytics to your Google Ads accounts and enable ads personalization:
- Any audiences you create in Analytics are automatically exported to those accounts and become available for remarketing on the Google Search Network, Google Display Network, and YouTube.
- Analytics backfills those audiences with recently added members and those audiences are available for use in Google Ads within 1 day (on average).
- You can view the estimated audience size in Google Ads at any time. Note that for new audiences, while it may take some time for Google Ads to populate audiences to meet the size estimates, you can use those audiences in campaigns in the meantime.
When your data includes user IDs, any audience you create can include only the users associated with those IDs. When you export an audience based on user IDs to your linked Google Ads accounts, the audience will reflect only the last device on which a user ID was observed, and personalized ads will be displayed only on those devices.
Enable Google Ads remarketing
To enable remarketing in Google Ads with lists based on Analytics audiences you create in your Google Analytics 4 properties:
- Activate Google Signals for the property.
Note: Properties that were created prior to the addition of the Google Signals toggle (August 2018) do not require Google Signals to be activated to enable remarketing.
- Link your Google Ads and Analytics accounts. Ensure that you select the option to Enable Personalized Advertising.
- Allow up to two days for the lists to be available in Google Ads.
If you link your Google Analytics 4 property to a Google Ads Manager account, then all of those managed accounts also have access to your audiences.
If you unlink Analytics and Google Ads, ad groups that are targeting remarketing lists based on Analytics audiences will stop running.
The configuration of an audience is controlled within an Analytics property. Google Ads users cannot make changes to an audience that forms the basis of a remarketing list.
Learn more about Google Ads remarketing using Google Analytics 4 / Firebase data.
Set up Google Ads Dynamic remarketing
Dynamic remarketing lets you show your app users ads relevant to the specific products and services they viewed. Setting up dynamic remarketing for your app involves three steps:
- Make sure you enable Google Ads remarketing per the instructions above.
- Implement the recommended events for your business type.
- Link your Google Ads and Analytics accounts. (Note: you must share conversion and key events data from both Analytics and Google Ads.)
- Configure how your app sends attribution events.
Ads-personalization settings
You can, at any time, disable ads personalization for data collected from any Google Analytics 4 property. Learn More