Search Remarketing (RLSAs)

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What is RLSA?

Our next step is to look at Remarketing Lists for Search Ads, or RLSA. This is a technique where advertisers can add predefined audiences, or remarketing lists, to a paid search campaign for either observation or optimization purposes.

RLSA for observation

If we’re talking about observation, we’re using our RLSA to track and report on the number of people on your remarketing list who also search for your keywords. It’s always worthwhile adding remarketing for observation, so you can see the keywords that past site visitors or converters use to come back to your site. You can also assess what keywords are likely to drive repeat conversions or purchases from your report data.

RLSA for optimization

But if we’re using RLSA for optimization purposes, it actually helps us to set higher bid adjustments for past visitors to our website. We do this because they’ve already visited your website, they’ve shown an interest, and could therefore be considered a more valuable type of searcher, depending on the type of remarketing list they’re on. And because we can reach them again when they’re searching, we can bid more aggressively for their clicks or utilize the automated bid strategies, show them different ads, and really push to get them over the line and convert.

Setting up RLSA

Setting up remarketing lists

To create your audience or remarketing lists for RLSA campaigns, you first need to set up remarketing segments in Google Ads Audience Manager. To track visitors, you need to place the Google Ads remarketing tracking code on every page on your website. Once this code is sending data to Google Ads, you can choose to create new audience or segment.

Next, enter the page URL you want to track, for example, your product pages, or you might choose all site visitors. Once set up, you can now apply audience lists to search campaigns. Alternatively, you can set up more sophisticated audiences in GA4 and share them with Google Ads.

Adding remarketing lists to campaigns

To add audience or remarketing lists to a campaign, first, click the campaign you want to add the remarketing list to. Navigate to the Audiences tab on the left and choose to edit audience segments. Browse through your remarketing lists and simply select the audience you want to add and apply this to the campaign.

You can now set a positive or negative bid adjustment for this audience, or let the automated bid strategies optimize it for you, to increase or decrease visibility when this audience search for your keywords. You just need to choose to show the Table in the Audiences view to do this.

Don’t forget, you may also want to prevent certain audiences being served your ads, especially if they are recent converters, since they are unlikely to purchase again in the near future.

Applying negative audience lists

To apply negative audience lists to search campaigns, click the campaign you wish to exclude, navigate to the Audiences tab on the left, and choose Exclusions. Now select the audience you wish to exclude and apply this to the campaign. This action will prevent your ads from being served to anyone on this audience list.

Negative audiences also act as a signal to the AI powering the campaign to avoid showing ads to people who have the same characteristics as those on your negative audience list.

Advanced RLSA techniques

There are several advanced RLSA techniques that you should be aware of. For example, you can create specific ad copy to show to repeat visitors. Say you want to serve a search ad to a customer who’s been on your site before but hasn’t yet converted. To drive conversion, you can consider providing an exclusive offer or discount to them by targeting specially tailored ad copy to past site visitors or non-converting audiences.

Similarly, you can provide discount codes for repeat purchasers, which builds loyalty, or provide discounts for cart abandoners to remind them, or incentivize them, to come back and complete a purchase.