PPC glossary

Remarketing

Remarketing is showing ads to people who have already interacted with a business, for example by visiting its website, using its app, watching its YouTube videos or giving it their email address. Google Ads now calls remarketing lists 'your data' segments, which can be targeted or excluded across Search, YouTube, Display and Gmail.

Reviewed by Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director
Last reviewed 31 October 2026

How does remarketing work in Google Ads?

The Google tag on a website adds visitors to segments based on rules, such as everyone who viewed a product page or started checkout. Google says a segment needs more than 100 active users before it can run ads.

Website visitors, shown ads on Display and in later Google searches
App users
YouTube users who watched videos or interacted with the channel
Customer Match: uploaded customer contact details, matched to signed-in Google users
People who submitted a Google Ads lead form

What is dynamic remarketing?

Dynamic remarketing shows people the specific products or services they looked at. For retailers it needs product data in Merchant Center, a linked Google Ads account and the dynamic remarketing tag on the site.

For users in the European Economic Area, Google's consent mode needs both ad_user_data and ad_personalization granted for personalised advertising; if ad_personalization is denied, remarketing receives no data. Google's personalised advertising policy also bars advertiser-curated audiences for sensitive categories such as health, negative financial status and gambling, and excludes under-18s from personalised ads.

Using it well

Exclude recent buyers unless there is a reason to sell to them again
Separate cart abandoners from blog readers, since their intent differs
Bid higher on Search for past visitors who return to generic queries
Test incrementality, because many remarketed visitors would have come back anyway

Example

An online furniture shop builds a segment of visitors who added a sofa to their basket in the past 14 days without buying, and shows them dynamic ads featuring that sofa and a free delivery offer. It excludes anyone who bought, so the budget goes only on people still deciding.