Google Ads Remarketing: Setup, Audiences and Canadian Rules

Google Ads remarketing shows your ads to people who already visited your website or used your app, so you can bring them back when they are closer to buying. You place the Google tag on your site, build audience lists from visitor behavior, and attach those lists to a campaign. This guide covers how that works, how to set it up, how to run it well, and what a Canadian business must check on privacy before switching it on.

TL;DR

• Remarketing adds past visitors to lists through a Google tag placed on every page, then lets you target those lists with ads.
• Lists need a minimum size before they serve: 100 active users in the last 30 days for most networks, and more for search-ad lists in Analytics.
• Standard remarketing shows a general ad. Dynamic remarketing shows the exact product or service a visitor viewed and needs a data feed.
• Segment by behavior, not just by visit, and never leave a remarketing campaign on autopilot.
• In Canada, your privacy policy and consent setup matter as much as the campaign itself.

Table of Contents

• What Google Ads remarketing is and how it works
• Standard versus dynamic remarketing
• Audience requirements to know before you spend
• How to set up Google Ads remarketing, step by step
• Audiences worth building for a local business
• How to manage remarketing so it keeps working
• Privacy and consent: what to check in Canada
• Our perspective on remarketing
• Let us run your remarketing
• FAQ
• Sources

What Google Ads remarketing is and how it works

Remarketing, also called retargeting, is advertising aimed at people who have already shown interest. A visitor looks at your service page, leaves without calling or booking, and later sees your ad on another website, in an app or on YouTube. The ad reminds them of what they were already considering.

Technically, a remarketing list lets you show ads to people who previously visited your website. The Google tag on your pages adds each visitor to a data segment. When that person later browses sites in Google’s network, Google can serve them your ad. You choose which segment sees which message, for example new visitors versus returning ones.

For a local business, the logic is simple. Most visitors do not convert on the first visit. A plumber’s quote page, a restaurant’s online ordering page or a clinic’s booking page all get visitors who compare two or three options before deciding. Remarketing keeps your name in front of the people who were already looking at you, rather than spending the same budget on strangers.

Standard versus dynamic remarketing

Google describes two types of remarketing. Standard remarketing shows ads to people who previously visited your website or used your mobile app. Dynamic remarketing shows visitors an ad featuring the specific product they viewed, and it requires a data feed.

For most service businesses, standard remarketing is the right starting point. Dynamic remarketing earns its place when you have a catalog: a retailer with dozens of products, or a restaurant group with a menu of items. In that case, you upload a product or service feed (a spreadsheet-style file with a unique ID, price, image and more) to the Business data section of the Shared library, or to Google Merchant Center if you are a retailer. Google’s recommendation engine then picks the mix of items for each ad based on popularity and what the visitor looked at, and predicts which ad layout is likely to perform best for that person and placement.

Which campaign types can use remarketing

Per Google’s developer documentation, dynamic remarketing is available for Display, Performance Max and App campaigns, while audience segments are supported for Display, Search, Video, Hotel and Standard Shopping campaigns. That gives you this practical map:

Video has a wrinkle. Among YouTube formats, skippable in-stream, in-feed, Shorts and masthead ads can remarket to viewers, while non-skippable in-stream and bumper ads cannot.

Audience requirements to know before you spend

The most common reason a remarketing campaign does not run is that the list is too small or not populated yet. Google’s compatibility rules say your segments need at least 100 active visitors or users in the last 30 days on the Display Network, the Search Network and YouTube. Customer lists uploaded or refreshed after February 1, 2024 also need 100 active users, while older lists must still meet the previous 1,000 matched-user requirement.

Two more details save headaches:

• Newly created lists can take 48 to 72 hours to fully populate. Do not judge a campaign in its first day.
• Google Signals must be enabled in Google Analytics, and the relevant cookies must be implemented correctly, or audiences will not fill.

If you build lists in Google Analytics for search ads, the bar is different. A remarketing list for search ads can last up to 540 days and needs at least 1,000 cookies before it can be used to tailor search ads.

This is why a low-traffic site often struggles with remarketing. If your website gets only a few dozen visitors a month, the first job is getting traffic through local search and Google Business Profile, then remarketing to it. Our local SEO services are built for that first step.

How to set up Google Ads remarketing, step by step

The exact screens change, so use Google’s help pages as the final word. The sequence stays the same.

1. Tag your website

The Google tag is a block of code that adds website visitors to data segments so you can target ads at them. For basic remarketing, place it on every page of your site. If you use Google Tag Manager, Google’s guide says to retrieve your conversion ID, create a Google Ads Remarketing tag, choose a trigger that fires on all pages, then save and publish.

For dynamic remarketing you need more: the Google tag plus an event snippet, with the event snippet only on pages where specific actions happen, such as product views or adds to cart.

One restriction matters for some industries: Google Ads does not permit tags on pages related to policy-restricted offers.

2. Build your audience segments

In the Audience manager in the Shared library, you can create a website-visitors segment, choose its members, and build rules for single, multiple or excluded actions with a number of days. You can pre-fill the segment with visitors from the previous 30 days or start empty. Google also supports other segment types, including Engaged Audiences, YouTube users, Customer Match, app users and lead form segments.

Always exclude people who already converted unless you have a reason to sell to them again. Showing a booking ad to someone who booked yesterday wastes budget and irritates the customer.

3. Create the campaign

In a Display campaign, you pick a goal (Sales, Leads, Website traffic, or Brand awareness and reach), set a daily budget, choose a bidding strategy, and select automated or manual targeting to include your data segments. The monthly cap works out to your daily budget multiplied by 30.4. Bidding options include Target CPA, Maximize clicks, Maximize conversions, Viewable CPM and Manual CPC.

Google’s own best-practice page for dynamic remarketing suggests Target CPA to maximize conversions or Target ROAS to maximize revenue, image ads in several sizes, and an automated bidding strategy to handle frequency caps.

4. Write ads for the stage, not the audience in general

A visitor who read your blog needs a different message from one who reached your quote form. Keep ads specific: the service they viewed, a clear next step, and a reason to act now that is true for your business.

Audiences worth building for a local business

One giant list of all visitors is the weakest setup. Search Engine Land’s guidance is to test different timeframes (10, 60, 90, 180 and 365 days), page-specific visitors, converted audiences, new visitors and traffic-source audiences, and to keep drastically different audiences in separate ad groups or campaigns.

Here is how that looks in practice for three of the businesses we work with most:

A short window (10 to 30 days) suits fast decisions like dinner. A longer window (90 to 180 days) suits considered purchases like renovations or legal services.

How to manage remarketing so it keeps working

Remarketing is not set-and-forget. Search Engine Land’s advice is to optimize it like a search campaign, with ad copy tests, new keyword experiments, pausing weak ones and negative keywords, while avoiding a direct mirror of changes from your standard search campaigns. The same piece says to check placements regularly, since apps, games and entertainment sites can burn spend, and to consider blocking mobile or running separate device campaigns if mobile eats the budget. It also warns against leaving display remarketing on autopilot.

A simple monthly routine:

1. Review placement reports and exclude sites or apps that produce clicks but no leads.
2. Compare conversion rate by audience. Cut the lists that do not convert, and give more budget to the ones that do.
3. Rotate ad creative so the same people do not see the same image for months.
4. Check that tags still fire after any website change. A redesign that drops the Google tag silently empties your lists.
5. Confirm that conversion tracking counts calls, form submissions and orders correctly.

Budget questions come up constantly. There is no universal answer to whether a given monthly figure is enough, because it depends on how many people are in your lists and what a customer is worth to you. A small list needs only a small budget to reach everyone in it, and a large list with a tight budget will reach people too thinly. Size the budget to the audience, not the other way round.

Privacy and consent: what to check in Canada

Remarketing relies on cookies and behavioral tracking, so it touches Canadian privacy law. Under PIPEDA, knowledge and consent are required for collecting, using or disclosing personal information. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s guidance says opt-out consent for online behavioral advertising can be reasonable when people are clearly informed at or before collection, can easily opt out, the opt-out takes effect immediately and persists, the information is non-sensitive, and it is destroyed or de-identified as soon as possible.

A second source summarizes the line between the two kinds of consent: express consent is needed for sensitive information, or use outside a visitor’s reasonable expectations, while implied consent works for non-sensitive information with a clear purpose. The same source notes that for visitors from Quebec, Law 25 keeps tracking technologies off until the visitor turns them on. If you serve Quebec visitors, treat that as a design requirement for your consent banner.

Google adds its own conditions. When you use data segments, your privacy policy must include a description of how you use data to advertise, a note that third-party vendors including Google show your ads across the internet, a note that they use cookies or device identifiers to serve ads based on past visits, and how visitors can opt out through Google’s Ads Settings.

One more rule for businesses whose customers include young people: users under 18 are not eligible for personalized advertising of any kind, and advertisers cannot upload customer information from viewers of child-directed content.

Before launching, run this checklist:

• Your privacy policy covers advertising cookies and the Google opt-out.
• Your cookie banner informs visitors before tracking starts and offers an easy opt-out.
• Sensitive pages (health, financial) are kept out of remarketing lists, and you ask a privacy lawyer if you are unsure what counts as sensitive in your sector.
• Quebec visitors are handled with opt-in.

Our perspective on remarketing

Most local businesses we talk to treat remarketing as an add-on they will get to later. We see it the other way round. It is the step that turns the traffic you already paid for, through search, your Google Business Profile or social, into enquiries and orders.

The failure we see most often is not bad ads. It is a disconnected setup: one vendor builds the website, another runs ads, a third handles the listing, and nobody checks that the tag fires or that the audience matches the offer. Remarketing exposes those gaps quickly, because it depends on every other channel working.

That is why we run it as part of one plan. Tracking is set up with the website, audiences are built around the pages that matter, and results are reported in plain language so you can see leads and orders, not just impressions. We think a local business should know what its ad budget did last month, and who is accountable for it.

Our approach is designed to build measurable revenue, not just clicks, and remarketing is one of the most direct ways to do that once the foundations are in place.

Pooja

Let us run your remarketing

If you would rather have a team handle tagging, audiences, creative and reporting, our Google and Meta ads management covers campaign setup and ongoing management for local businesses across Metro Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. Remarketing works best when the website, tracking and local listings are lined up, so we build those together under one accountable team.

If your site is not yet bringing enough visitors to fill an audience list, we can start with local SEO and your Google Business Profile, then add remarketing. You can also read how geofencing ads reach people near your location, a useful companion to remarketing. To talk through your situation, start at Digital Growth Labs.

FAQ

What is remarketing in Google Ads?

It is a way to show ads to people who previously visited your website or used your app. A Google tag adds them to a list, and you target that list across Display, Search, YouTube and other supported campaigns. The point is to bring back people who already showed interest.

Can you retarget with Google Ads?

Yes. Google Ads supports retargeting website and app visitors through data segments, as long as the segments meet the minimum size requirement of 100 active users in the last 30 days on the main networks. Your privacy policy and consent setup must also meet Google’s requirements.

How do I set up Google Ads remarketing?

Add the Google tag to every page, create a website-visitors segment in the Audience manager, then attach that segment to a campaign with a budget and bidding strategy. Wait up to 72 hours for the list to populate. For dynamic remarketing, add a data feed and event snippets as well.

How long should a remarketing audience window be?

Match it to how long your customers take to decide. Search Engine Land suggests testing windows from 10 days up to 365 days. Fast purchases like food orders suit short windows, and larger projects suit longer ones.

Do Canadian businesses need cookie consent for remarketing?

Yes, you need valid consent under PIPEDA, and the form depends on the data involved. Non-sensitive data with a clear purpose can rely on opt-out consent if visitors are informed and can opt out easily. Quebec visitors require opt-in under Law 25. Ask a privacy professional about your specific site.

Sources

• Tag your website for dynamic remarketing, Google Ads Help
• Remarketing, Tag Platform, Google for Developers
• About your data segment compatibility, Google Ads Help
• About your data segments, Google Ads Help
• Remarketing lists for search ads, Analytics Help
• Tag your website using Google Ads, Google Ads Help
• Create an audience segment that includes your website visitors, Google Ads Help
• Set up dynamic remarketing with Display, Performance Max, and App campaigns, Google Ads Help
• Get started with audience management, Google Ads API
• About dynamic remarketing, Google Ads Help
• Set up a dynamic remarketing campaign, Google Ads Help
• How to maximize your Google Ads remarketing campaigns, Search Engine Land
• Guidelines on privacy and online behavioural advertising, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
• Cookie consent in Canada: PIPEDA and Law 25 rules, Kukie.io
• What to include in your privacy policy for your data segments, Google Ads Help
• Personalized advertising policy, Google Advertising Policies Help

Recommended

• Google & Meta Ads Management Vancouver
• Geofencing Ads: How They Work and What Local Businesses Need
• Local SEO Services Vancouver, BC
• Google Business Profile Management Vancouver