Create and manage Remarketing Audiences

You can use preconfigured audiences that the Analytics team has developed to cover many of your use cases, you can create new audiences from scratch, and you can import any of your existing Segments to use as the basis for a new audience. Once you've developed an audience, it becomes available in the ad account you select, and you can put it to work right away as part of a remarketing campaign.

In this article:

Create a Remarketing Audience

To create a Remarketing Audience:

1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Select the Admin tab and navigate to the account and property in which you want to create the audience.
3. In the Property column, click Audience Definitions, then click Audiences.
4. Click + New Audience.
   

   

5. In the View menu, select a view that includes the users to whom you want to show ads in your remarketing campaign. Any users filtered from the view that you select will also be filtered from the Remarketing Audience.
6. In the Sharing menu, select the advertising account in which you want to use the Remarketing Audience. You cannot change this selection once you have saved the Remarketing Audience.
7. Click Next step.
   

   

8. Define your audience. You can:
   • Choose from preconfigured audience definitions:
     • Smart List: Let Google manage the audience for you.
     • All Users: All users to your site.
     • New Users: Any user who has conducted only one session on your site.
     • Returning Users: Any users who has conducted at least one session on your site.
     • Users who visited a specific section of my site/app: Click the edit icon, and enter the URL of a page or directory on your site, or a screen in your app. This option uses the contains match type, and matches any URL that contains the string you enter here.
       If there are more than 1000 page/screen URLs for your site/app, then Analytics displays matches as you enter text only if matches are found within the first 1000 URLs. If there are no matches in the first 1000 URLs, then Analytics displays nothing. In this case, you can copy and paste the URL from a browser, or from some other source of URLs like a spreadsheet.
     • Users who completed a goal conversion: Click the edit icon, and select a goal from the menu. This option requires that you have previously configured Analytics Goals.
     • Users who completed a transaction: This is already configured to include any user with more than zero transactions.
   • Create a new audience definition. Read Create a new audience definition below.
   • Import a Segment. Read Import a Segment below.
   
   Regardless of the method you choose to create your audience, you can see an estimate of your audience size under Users over last 7 days. This value is determined by the number of users who have met your conditions for that time period. This is only an estimate of how many future users will meet your criteria based on the previous seven days of traffic.
   
   Keep in mind that unless you have manually configured sampling via sampleRate (analytics.js) or setSampleRate (ga.js) (enforcing sampling before data is sent to Analytics), Analytics sampling has no effect on the number of users eligible for your remarketing audiences. Analytics sampling can affect the estimate of an audience size, but not the audience itself.
   
   
9. Set the Membership duration for your audience from 1 to 540. This is the number of days that users who meet these criteria are eligible to be served remarketing ads. Remarketing lists for search ads accommodates a maximum of 180 days, and so truncates values over 180.
10. Enter a name for your remarketing audience.
11. Click Save.

When you create a new Remarketing Audience, Analytics populates the list with up to 10 days of data so that you can use the list right away. If you have fewer than 10 days of data available, then Analytics uses the data you have.

 

Create a new audience definition

If you don't want to use a recommended audience, click Create New to create a new audience based on a segment you define. See Remarketing Audience examples.

When you finish configuring your audience, click Apply.

If your audience definition has an Exclude condition, an additional check box appears, and you have the option to permanently or temporarily remove users from that audience. Learn more

Learn more about how filters are evaluated.

 

Import a Segment

You can import a Segment to use as the basis for your audience. When you're defining an audience, click Import Segment, and then choose from the Segments that are available in the current property.

 

Edit a Remarketing Audience

1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Select the Admin tab and navigate to the account and property in which you want to edit the audience.
3. In the PROPERTY column, click Remarketing > Audiences.
4. In the list of existing audiences, click the name of the audience you want to edit.
   

   

5. Click Edit for either Link Configuration or Define Audience. You can edit any aspect of the list except the advertising account with which it is shared.

If you edit the definition of an existing audience, new users are added to the audience based on the new definition. Existing users who were added based on the previous definition remain in the audience until their membership duration expires.

 

Use a Remarketing Audience

When you save a Remarketing Audience in Google Analytics, it becomes available in the advertising account you indicated. You can then use the Remarketing Audience in your remarketing campaigns. If you want to use a Remarketing Audience in more than one advertising account, you need to recreate it for each account.

Users are not removed from an audience if their activity in a subsequent session disqualifies them from the audience. For example, if user A is added to an audience of users who did not purchase the items in their shopping carts, and user A then subsequently returns to purchase those items, user A is not removed from the audience. To avoid spending part of your remarketing budget on users who no longer meet the criteria of your audience, you need to (1) create a second audience based on opposite criteria, and (2) in AdWords, create a custom-combination list that subtracts the second audience from the first.

For example, if you create an audience of users who abandon shopping carts, you would also create a second audience of users who purchase the items in their carts. You would then use a custom-combination list in AdWords to include the first audience but not the second.

 

Related resources

• Remarketing in AdWords
• Import Remarketing Audiences from the Analytics Solutions Gallery
• Remarket with Segments
• Use your Remarketing Audiences in Adwords
• Remarketing Audience examples
• Smart Lists
• Custom-combination list in AdWords