AdWords Remarketing Lists for Search Ads

AdWords has historically had a few ways you can target people:

  • Keyword & match type
  • Geographical location
  • Device – desktop, mobile and tablet
  • Day parting

Apart from keyword, they are fairly crude targeting tools.

Google have introduced a fifth targeting tool: Remarketing Lists for Search Ads.

Remarketing lists for search ads allows you to use your existing Google remarketing lists on AdWords. Let’s look at some scenarios.

You run a toy store, and a customer visits the board games section of your site. They are added to the board games remarketing list. The customer later does a search on Google for “toys”. They are shown a specific ad for board games, with a 10% off discount via a special landing page.

You sell high value B2B software and use AdWords for lead generation – clicks are expensive. Leads generated are actively followed up by an account manager. You add a remarketing list to the thankyou page for the lead, and use it as a negative list to prevent expensive ads been shown to prospects who are actively being nurtured.

The possibilities are endless, and I’m sure we’ll see some amazing “why didn’t I think of that” uses coming out over the next year or two.

A few catches for this new option:

  • It’s still in beta, you need to be white listed by your Google rep to use it.
  • You can use your existing remarketing lists, but during the beta, only people added to the list after you were white listed will be targeted.
  • Minimum list size is 500 people (as opposed to 100 for display retargeting).
  • You can’t use creatives that display prior knowledge of the visitor’s action. In other words, don’t be creepy.

There’s a few other traps for young players.

Talk to your First consultant for more information.