Ever since remarketing was introduced within Google Ads several years ago, it has been quite the sensation with advertisers. The ability to re-target those users who have already visited your website or a specific area of your site has helped companies create a better return on investment. It has helped advertisers with budgeting and taking each dollar spent a longer way than before.

However, the general perception of remarketing through Google Ads is that it is a rich company’s game with deep pockets. The bigger advertisers with huge marketing budgets are able to effectively use remarketing while the smaller advertisers, local businesses etc have been at a disadvantage.

While some of this perception is valid, it is not entirely the truth. Small companies can in fact use remarketing through Google Ads provided they know what are the minimum requirements and take time to create a well planned cohesive Google Ads strategy.

1) Visitors / Audience Size

Once you setup your remarketing advertising campaign and add the necessary Google site tags on your website pages, your visitors start getting added to an audience list that you have to create during the setup stage.

For your remarketing advertisements to start showing up, you need to have a minimum number of visitors to your site that gets added to the audience list.

Depending upon the Google Network where you want your remarketing ads to show up, the minimum audience list differs as follows:

For Google Search: At least 1000 active visitors in the last 30 days.

For Google Display Network: At least 100 active visitors in the last 30 days.

For YouTube: At least 1000 active visitors in the last 30 days.

For Gmail: At least 100 active visitors in the last 30 days in the Google Display Network.

If your website does not get that many unique visitors that are getting added to your remarketing audience list each month, then your advertisements will not be shown to Google users.

However, it is heartening to note that for Google Display Network and Gmail you need only 100 visitors within a month. Previously this number was much higher. Google has made remarketing much more accessible for small businesses by reducing the minimum number of visitors required for remarketing ads to be triggered.

2) Sensitive Categories

Apart from minimum audience size, the next most important requirement when it comes to remarketing in Google Ads is the category of your product or service.

There are certain categories that are deemed as ‘sensitive’ or ‘restricted’.

If your website falls in any of those categories, then you will either need to get your business approved for remarketing or you will be restricted completely from advertising.
Some of these categories include:

  • Alcohol related products
  • Gambling sites
  • Clinical Trial Recruitment
  • Products or services targeted at users under the age of 13
  • Negative financial status categories etc.

There are a number of categories that are covered in prohibited or sensitive list in Google Ads. For the comprehensive and up to date list, please check Google support page here.

3) List duration

For both Display Network and Google Search, your audience list can stay active for a maximum of 540 days.

Note that the default duration, if you have not specified any limit, is 30 days.

What this means is that once a user has been added to your remarketing list, Google will continue to target them for your advertisements until the duration limit has been matched. So for the default 30 days, a user that visits a specific area of your website will continue to see your ads on Google Search and Display Network for 30 days.

If they revisit your website during that time, then the timer gets reset and they will be shown your ads for another 30 days.

If a user or audience list has been inactive for the set duration of the list, they will be marked as inactive and ads will not be shown to them. In case of the whole list being inactive, it will be marked as a closed list.

Final thoughts

While setting up a remarketing campaign can seem daunting, it is actually quite simple. With minimum requirements getting eased over time, even smaller advertisers can use the power of remarketing campaigns.

The only thing that you should pay attention to is creating a proper plan including the flow of your sales funnel. Take time to think which users should get added to your audience list, where they will be taken when they click on remarketing ads and what is the message you are going to convey to get them back to your website.