Google said on Thursday that it will now let advertisers use audiences (formerly known as remarketing lists) created in Google Analytics to reach people on Google Search without any changes to tagging.
Google’s Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) lets an advertiser tailor search ads to users based on their past activity on the advertiser’s website. This can now be utilized in conjunction with over 200 Google Analytics dimensions and metrics, and audiences can be used to re-engage customers across Google Search and the Display network with a consistent message.
Google has a case study looking at how financial services provider TransUnion used Google Analytics audiences to “spend more efficiently” on Google Search and get “impressive conversion rates and cost efficiencies”. You can take a look at that here. The company reportedly
increased its conversion rate by 65% and average transaction value by 58% while lowering both CPCs for existing customers and cost per transaction by 50% each.
There’s an Instant Activation feature, so you can start using RLSA by going to Property > Tracking Info >Data Collection from the Admin tab, and making sure Remarketing is set to “ON”. Then, all eligible audiences will start to populate for RLSA.
Google says there are three ways to create new audiences. You can use the Audience builder in the remarketing section of the Admin tab and select the relevant Adwords accounts, or if you have an existing segment you want to turn into an audience, you can click on the segment options and hit “Build Audience”. It will then take you to the audience builder. The other option is to import audiences from the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery.
“Once you have shared an audience with AdWords, it will appear instantly in your AdWords Shared Library and will show eligible users in the column List size (Google search),” says Google in a blog post. “Keep in mind that an audience must accumulate a minimum of 1,000 users before you can use it for remarketing on Google Search.”
This help center article on AdWords remarketing lists for search ads should tell you just about everything you need to know.