PPCChat | Google Ads Retargeting | 15th April 2025

Host Julie F Bacchini and special guest Jyll Saskin Gales discussed Google Ads retargeting during this week’s PPCChat session, including what experts find most challenging, whether it’s better to set up retargeting with Google Analytics or the Google tag, the top dos and don’ts for effective retargeting, and more.

Q1: Are you currently doing any type of retargeting in your Google Ads accounts? If so, what are you doing and if not, why not?

I think folks need to be more specific on their definitions of targeting vs retargeting. Most of us are doing some sort of targeting, but the first-party data component requires compliance and is industry-specific. That said, YouTube audiences are the magic button that lets you retarget based on other people’s content. I also think not enough people are paying enough attention to Microsoft’s impression-based remarketing. @navahhopkins

Some clients are interested in retargeting and some are not. Those who are want the basics. @NeptuneMoon

Exclusions are the power move. @navahhopkins

@JyllSaskinGales How would you define retargeting in this context? @NeptuneMoon

@NeptuneMoon  I define retargeting as advertising to people your business already has a relationship with. While remarketing and retargeting technically are slightly different, I use them interchangeably. In Google Ads, your retargeting segments will be under “Your data segments” in Audience Manager, and there are four kinds: Website-based remarketing, app-based remarketing, engagement-based remarketing (e.g. YouTube), and customer list-based remarketing (aka Customer Match) @JyllSaskinGales

@navahhopkins  How are you using exclusions? @NeptuneMoon

@navahhopkins ya are you talking about customer acquisition settings or content/KW/IP exclusiosn? @jord_stark

Excluding first-party lists in pmax, excluding adjacent but not useful audiences in search campaigns, there are many options to exclude. @navahhopkins

I really like YT retargeting, and we do a lot of program retargeting for my energy client. @JuliaVyse

Negative keywords, placement exclusions, and IP exclusions are lovely – but audiences exclusions are super useful. @navahhopkins

Yup, you can exclude your remarketing lists from every campaign type except Shopping. And in certain campaign types (PMax, Search, Shopping) you have the “customer lifecycle goals” like “new customer acquisition” or “retention” (coincidentally, next week’s Inside Google Ads podcast episode is about this!) @JyllSaskinGales

Customer lifecycle goals are not technically retargeting/remarketing, but some of them rely on your customer list to work properly (since Customer Match is the feature that tells Google who is a current customer and who isn’t) @JyllSaskinGales

Does anyone have go to lists they exclude off the bat? For lead gen it’s typically people who have already completed the form or are a customer. Are there any others you all use that you feel has helped? @jord_stark

@jord_stark I will generally recommend observing before excluding. You don’t know what you don’t know! But if there’s something you absolutely know to be true about your audience – for example, you’re a home service provider, and you don’t want to waste money advertising to people who rent their homes rather than own – then you can exclude “Renters” from your campaign. Keep in mind that many folks will be “Unknown” for various demographic / life event / etc, so you’ve always got to think about whether inclusion for people you WANT is better/worst for your strategy than excluding people you DON’T WANT..@JyllSaskinGales

@jord_stark Depending on the region, I like excluding different income levels, as well as potential life cycle audiences. This isn’t an audience setting, but I also do right and left-leaning placement exclusions depending on the product/messaging. Yes, it means more ad groups/campaigns, but it allows me more messaging control. @navahhopkins

I also run a placement report on P. Max and excluded non-Google owned and operated sites, and I feel like that has helped performance a lot. @jord_stark

Fun fact: Microsoft’s Audience network has a lot of crossover, so you can find a lot of the bad placements cheaper than Google and then exclude across both. @navahhopkins

@jord_stark turning PMax into a kind of Demand Gen + Search thing, I like that! @JyllSaskinGales

Q2: What are your biggest questions about retargeting? What do you find most challenging?

Are all types of retargeting (1st party, tag behaviours, engaged audiences) equal in terms of privacy on Google’s part? @JuliaVyse

I am going to be brutally honest that retargeting is ALWAYS and after thought for me.  I find it challenging with tighter budgets to justify and accept that it happens in Pmax – I might be kicked to the curb for this approach but that is m thinking. @runnerkik

I find retargeting in the privacy first world a chaos sandwich. I’d love Jyll to speak to how brands can build in retargeting knowing that we’re losing a lot of our control (both from ad platforms and regulation) @navahhopkins

@JuliaVyse definitely not. Certain types, like website-based remarketing (whether tag or GA4), are heavily impacted by privacy, consent, etc. While others, like YouTube-based remarketing, have seen virtually no impact. If the retargeting audience is based on data that lives on that platform (YouTube for Google Ads, IG engagers for Meta Ads, etc.) it tends to be much more durable. @JyllSaskinGales

 @runnerkik You can still sit with us if you’re running PMax, you’re doing remarketing. It’s not a requirement for all advertisers, by any means. It’s just one of the many tactics we have in our arsenal to achieve the clients’ objectives @JyllSaskinGales

@navahhopkins  first-party data (your customer’s personally identifiable information) is the best thing you can collect. Owning that relationship with your customers, not being reliant on Google or another platform to reach your audience. I go into much more detail about this in my book, but tl;dr, all businesses should be thinking about how to collect, store and use customer data as it’s one of the only competitive advantages you can have vs. your competitors. @JyllSaskinGales

Sure – but not every business is going to be able to meet the audience list threshold or maintain consent. @navahhopkins

@navahhopkins of course – it always depends, but if you can, you should. And if you can’t, there are other great, durable solutions for smaller advertisers like the Google-engaged audience. @JyllSaskinGales

Q3: Are you or anyone you know doing anything cool with retargeting that you can share with us?

I love targeting my competitor’s youtube channels. Let them create the content and I can profit off of it. @navahhopkins

I like to target influencer audiences on YT during a partnership, and then retarget those who interacted with the partnership video for sustain. @JuliaVyse

Also using retargeting lists to focus on renewal services (timing out when we know most people have to make the decision). Audience lists can go up to 540 days. use it! @JyllSaskinGales is going to have the best answers – but we should buy her amazing book for the full scoop. @navahhopkins

I have not tried this because I am not ecomm, but I have often thought that targeting ads to active customers to get them to recruit new customers could be awesome. Like giving them a code to share with friends and family. I know this gets done via email lists, but not everyone reads your emails or is on your list. @NeptuneMoon

There is definite potential overlap between email & retargeting ads, so it’s a great idea to think through those strategies together. Different platforms, but overlapping audiences for sure. I’ll be advertising my book to all my retargeting audiences tomorrow! I plan to do LinkedIn Ads, TikTok Ads, Meta Ads and Google Ads if I can get all my campaigns in order in time so I’ll report back to let you all know how it goes! Website-based remarketing and platform engagement-based remarketing @JyllSaskinGales

@NeptuneMoon that’s a writing challenge for sure. Share the code, but don’t sound like an MLM! @JuliaVyse

@JuliaVyse I view it like this – I refer people to brands I love all the time. If I can send along a code for them to try with a discount, I would love to do that. So it’s about building your brand evangelicals! @NeptuneMoon

Worth a test for sure. I would guess with no other data, that an email to share a code with a friend would work better than an ad. @JuliaVyse

Common Questions

Which is better: setting up retargeting with Google Analytics or the Google tag?

Google tag is better than Google Analytics, but Google Analytics is better than nothing. And if neither is possible, try the new Google-engaged audience, since it doesn’t require any tagging/linking/setup to work. Done is better than perfect..@JyllSaskinGales

I’m curious if your answer changed at all when we switched from UA to GA4. i.e. did you like UA? @navahhopkins

@navahhopkins  I loved UA  more for its user-friendliness than anything else. But for various reasons, the Google tag will likely capture more data than Google Analytics will, which is why I say it’s better. Still, Google Analytics audience segments (to use for remarketing) are powerful, and are absolutely “good enough” for businesses that don’t have the Google tag on their website and want to get started with website-based remarketing. @JyllSaskinGales

Have you seen any interesting ways to combine first-party data with Google Ads retargeting to create more personalised experiences? @runnerkik

@runnerkik first-party data (via Customer Match) is the most powerful and personalised type of retargeting you can use. The trade-off is ensuring you have a large enough audience segment that it can serve, but small enough that you can create personalised creative for that audience.
One example I like to use, that’s admittedly more for larger businesses, is around search conquesting. If one of your customers is looking for a competitor, the ad text should be highly personalised and focused on retention, vs if someone who is not your customer is looking for a competitor. @JyllSaskinGales

@runnerkik Conversion-based customer lists are another great feature that unlocks for you when you’re using Customer Match – audience segments built based on people who have completed your conversion actions. @JyllSaskinGales

Which campaign types can you use with remarketing/retargeting?

You can include “Your data segments” for targeting in your Search, Shopping, Display, Demand Gen, Video campaigns. You can observe them in Search, Shopping, Display. You can exclude them in Search, Display, Demand Gen, Video. And you can include them in your Audience signal for PMax (and App, I think – but App is not my specialty!) @JyllSaskinGales

Can I still use retargeting if my client doesn’t have Google Analytics on their website, and I can’t make any changes to their website like adding a tracking code?

YES! This is one of the newest Google Ads features that Google let completely go under the radar – it’s called the Google-engaged audience, every Google Ads account gets one, and it requires no code/tracking/consent / etc. to work. It is a game changer for small businesses, and I don’t use the term “game changer” lightly. I wrote an article for Search Engine Land about it, which goes live tomorrow. I’ve got a chapter on it in my book, Inside Google Ads: Everything you need to know about Audience Targeting, which comes out on Amazon tomorrow, and I also spoke to Santosh about it on the Guided PPC Podcast, if you want to check that out. @JyllSaskinGales

I will add the link to your post here tomorrow when it is published! @NeptuneMoon

Community Questions

Are all types of retargeting (1st party, tag behaviours, engaged audiences) equal in terms of privacy on Google’s part?

Definitely not. Certain types, like website-based remarketing (whether tag or GA4), are heavily impacted by privacy, consent, etc. While others, like YouTube-based remarketing, have seen virtually no impact. If the retargeting audience is based on data that lives on that platform (YouTube for Google Ads, IG engagers for Meta Ads, etc.), it tends to be much more durable. @JyllSaskinGales

I’d love Jyll to speak to how brands can build in retargeting knowing that we’re losing a lot of our control (both from ad platforms and regulation)

And avoid eating the chaos sandwich. @navahhopkins

First-party data (your customer’s personally identifiable information) is the best thing you can collect. Owning that relationship with your customers, not being reliant on Google or another platform to reach your audience. I go into much more detail about this in my book, but tl;dr, all businesses should be thinking about how to collect, store and use customer data as it’s one of the only competitive advantages you can have vs. your competitors. @JyllSaskinGales

Since we are talking first-party data here, I will post my usual reminder on the topic to make sure that you: @JyllSaskinGales

1. Have a privacy policy on the advertiser website that clearly states how data may be used
2. Have language in your contracts about data liability
3. Carry insurance to cover you for data liability

I heard a PPC colleague say last week that if they were running Google Search Ads and wanted to add retargeting, they wouldn’t use Google. They feel they’d get better results by complementing the search campaign with Meta retargeting. What do you think?

I 1000000000% agree with this. Meta is much kinder on retargeting and it’s a proven tactic to have the meta pixel on your site so that you can nurture the “impulse” on Meta with visual content and much better audience controls. We used to do this as a default at WordStream (you’d get Google, Microsoft, and Meta tags included at the start so you could turn to those audiences whenever you were ready) @navahhopkins

Google and Meta are like a Venn diagram; they share some of the same data and they each have some of their own data. It’s not an either/or proposition. If you can only afford to retarget in one place, by all means, go for it on Meta. But if they haven’t tested YouTube remarketing, or the Google-engaged audience, or Customer Match on Google, these could be great things to try via Demand Gen, or even via RLSA, to complement the strategy. @JyllSaskinGales

One tip that originated from @duanebrown many years ago was to include tags from platforms that you think might be good for advertising or retargeting to build data even if you are not using them at the moment. Let the data build for you and in some cases show that your audience is very much there, so it is ready when/if you are to start on a new platform. Thought that was so smart – then and now! @NeptuneMoon

@NeptuneMoon yes! I added the LinkedIn Insight tag to my website a while ago, because I knew that one day I might want to run LinkedIn Ads. @JyllSaskinGales

Thanks @JyllSaskinGales, @NeptuneMoon and @navahhopkins.. @JonDeNunzio

What are your thoughts on frequency capping for retargeting?

I think that it’s probably unnecessary for most businesses. These are your retargeting lists, your most qualified customers (or potential customers), why wouldn’t you want to reach them? Frequency capping can drive up your costs. I think a better way to fight ad fatigue is to refresh your creative more frequently, rather than putting in frequency caps. @JyllSaskinGales

We might have a friendly debate on our hands here. I strongly believe in frequency caps because most businesses are not going to have the bandwidth to refresh creative. Look at Semrush – they bombard us with the same ad for months on end even if we’re a customer. If you’ve served an ad more than 5 times to a human in a day, odds are you should move on to a different human. @navahhopkins

@navahhopkins I love friendly debate! To use the Semresh example, that’s a segmenting issue (in my opinion) more than a need for frequency capping. @JyllSaskinGales

Sure – let’s pick on the dog food ad that follows me around that I haven’t interacted with. @navahhopkins

We can have an entire chat on LAZY marketing, no? @NeptuneMoon

I’m in the it-depends camp. If you have a strict CPL and a long sales cycle (90+ days), you probably want some kind of freq control. But agree that you don’t need it for any retargeting no matter what. And when it comes to display retargeting? Please cap that.  @JuliaVyse

I don’t know – my husband refuses to buy a kia because Kia bombarded him with the same bad ads. @navahhopkins

On a personal level, sure, being relentlessly bombarded with ads can be annoying. We all have that instinct to tune out when we feel like we’re being nagged. But as a marketer, I’ve also seen how consistent exposure, even if frequent, can subtly build brand recognition. If the creative is engaging, even a persistent presence can stick in someone’s mind. @runnerkik

there’s real risk to hurt your brand if you overload people with the same bad content and while the first two weeks might be safe to have no caps, I’d be nervous to run ads with no safeguards. @navahhopkins

@runnerkik agree. now to find the sweet spot! @JuliaVyse

It’s almost like, as humans, we might roll our eyes, but as consumers, that repeated exposure can still do its job. So, while I understand the impulse to put strict caps in place, I’m not entirely convinced it’s always necessary. I wouldn’t necessarily fight tooth and nail against them, but I’m also not convinced that uncapped frequency is always detrimental, especially if the messaging resonates. There’s a balance to be struck, and I think the ‘right’ frequency is probably more nuanced than a simple cap. @runnerkik

Like everything, this is a fine line… The problem is that we don’t know which people on our retargeting list find the ads neutral to helpful and which find them neutral to intrusive or annoying. @NeptuneMoon

A good ad can be included indefinitely – most ads are not good. @navahhopkins

I think a cap to make sure you do not stalk someone in a way that feels intrusive is not a bad idea – like a top exposure guardrail. @NeptuneMoon

Well, like, if my burger client has a limited time off of just 2 weeks, you BET you’re going to see that ad a bunch of times. And we’re actually okay with that, because if we don’t, you’ll see the McDonalds ad a bunch of times and not choose us. The key in that case is good creative and a good offer. @JuliaVyse

They barely meet mediocre. @navahhopkins

It’s important to remember the “human” perspective rather than the “marketer” perspective. Like, we all bitch and moan about AI Overviews, but you know what? My mother mentioned to me how much she loves “that AI thing on Google.” I had a friend mention at dinner “That new AI summary on Google is so helpful!” We are usually NOT the target audience. @JyllSaskinGales

I feel like I would be cancelled for my thoughts…I tend to lean towards letting Google’s algorithms do their thing. My thinking is, they have a wealth of data on user behaviour and ad fatigue, so their dynamic adjustments are probably more sophisticated than any static cap I might manually set. While there’s definitely a human element to marketing, in this particular area, I’m inclined to trust the machine learning to find that sweet spot of visibility LMAO. @runnerkik

@navahhopkins  I think I was kind of in your brain just now. @runnerkik

So…about ad strength….Demand Gen and PMax have decent ad strength score correlation to the quality of the ad. It’s text that it struggles with. so if your ad strength is average or lower, maybe consider some caps so you don’t piss people off (if you can’t edit the ad). Also, keep an eye on comments through organic social channels because people will let you know if you’re burning bridges. Also having no frequency caps in the middle of live stream ads is the best way to piss off your customers – you’re the thing that keeps interrupting the big event. @navahhopkins

What are the top Dos and Don’ts for doing retargeting well?

Hmm… a top Do is to ensure you spend time and effort on your ad creative. Just because you’re reaching a highly qualified audience, it doesn’t mean that the click/view is a given. Creative still matters a lot!! DO focus on your ad creative. And a top Don’t would be if you’re using dynamic remarketing, don’t forget to ensure you have it set up properly. I am not a Merchant Center expert, but I know that there’s more to it than just launching a dynamic remarketing campaign and thinking you’re done! There are some finicky steps required in GMC and potentially in your website code/tags as well? So definitely DON’T forget to look into that if you’re leveraging dynamic remarketing. @JyllSaskinGales

I’d add that for me, the ultimate ‘do’ and ‘don’t’ really boils down to following the data. its relatively cheap… Because of that, I find I have a bit more breathing room to experiment and learn from the data without having to be quite as hyper-focused on every single penny, the way I might be with something like non-brand search where costs can escalate quickly. @runnerkik

Do make sure you have enough humans. Don’t buy lists…you’ll get suspended. @navahhopkins

For me, it would be don’t be lazy about it. You don’t want to execute in ways that feel poor to non marketers! @NeptuneMoon

@navahhopkins  I didn’t know that about buying lists?? @runnerkik

Yea – Google updated the rules 4-5 years ago that if you use a purchased list and you get caught, your ad account gets suspended @navahhopkins

I have never been asked to do it but I have used tools that create custom search lists of keyword clouds. where you create a custom audience based on what they search in Google. @runnerkik

It’s why I laugh at all the live ramp initiatives that keep trying to do work with paid search. Oh – to be clear this is about lists of humans. you can absolutely use custom segments no problem! @navahhopkins

I have been in presentation from them – I learned something new today – so you mean emails lists of humans for customer match? @runnerkik

yea – so when someone offers to sell you 20K humans with a job title, you should not use it in your advertising. @navahhopkins

This is a great time to clarify some confusing Google language. In Google Ads, custom segment (formerly known as custom audience) is when you create your own audience segment based on people’s interests, previous searches, types of websites they visit and/or types of apps they use. In literally every other ad platform, a custom audience is a remarketing list. But in Google, that’s called a “Your data segment.” In Google, a custom segment is NOT remarketing. @JyllSaskinGales

This is why privacy rights are important. we should not be bought and sold without our consent. @navahhopkins

I am going to add another food for thought on YouTube ads for retargeting…Static YT ads are one thing – frequency probably doesn’t matter. Video ads that delay the start of or interrupt desired content? Quite another.My kid loves to watch Mark Rober videos on YT and has such a negative view of the brands that constant interrupt the videos. Adults are not different in this way, so be mindful of this. It is at a higher level of annoyance than being interspersed in a feed like on FB or IG. @NeptuneMoon

This is what I was talking about earlier – don’t be the annoying bug getting in the way of a sunny picnic live stream. @navahhopkins

The kid will shout “no one cares Nissan” or something like that when ads get too frequent during videos she wants to watch. The midroll ones in particular bring the vitriol. @NeptuneMoon

PPCChat Participants

• Navah Hopkins @navahhopkins
• Julie F Bacchini @NeptuneMoon
• Julia Vyse @JuliaVyse
• Jyll Saskin Gales @JyllSaskinGales
• Jordan Strak @jord_stark
• Sarah Stemen @runnerkik
• Jon DeNunzio @JonDeNunzio

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