Audience Targeting & RLSA

Why Audience Targeting Matters in Search

Search ads already do something powerful: they target by intent. When someone types "buy running shoes," you know what they want. But two people can type the exact same search query with very different purchase likelihood.

A first-time visitor who just discovered your brand is not the same as someone who added a product to their cart yesterday but didn't check out. Audience targeting lets you adjust your strategy for WHO is searching, not just WHAT they search.

Types of Audiences in Google Ads

Google offers several audience types, each built from different data sources:

• In-Market: People Google has identified as actively researching a category. Updated frequently based on recent search behavior.
• Affinity: Long-term interests and lifestyle segments. Broader and less purchase-intent-focused than in-market.
• Custom Intent: Audiences you define by entering specific keywords and URLs. Google builds the audience from people who searched those terms or visited those sites.
• Customer Match: Upload your own email list and Google matches it to Google accounts. Target or exclude your existing customers.
• RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads): Target people who have previously visited your website when they search on Google.

RLSA: The Most Powerful Search Audience

RLSA stands for Remarketing Lists for Search Ads. It's the ability to customize your search campaigns based on whether a user has previously visited your website.

You have two powerful use cases:

• Bid more: Show ads to everyone, but increase your bid when past visitors search your keywords. Past visitors are more likely to convert.
• Show ads only to past visitors: Use a more specific (and potentially expensive) keyword that you only want to target when the searcher already knows your brand.

Customer Match: Using Your Own Data

Customer Match lets you upload a list of email addresses (or phone numbers, physical addresses) that your customers shared with you. Google matches those to Google accounts and creates an audience you can target or exclude.

• GDPR requirements for EU: You must have explicit consent from users to use their data for advertising. Include this in your privacy policy and signup forms.
• Minimum 1,000 matched users: The list needs at least 1,000 matched Google accounts to be usable for targeting. Smaller lists can be created but won't activate.
• Match rate varies: Typically 30-60% of emails match. B2B lists often have lower match rates since work emails are rarely tied to Google accounts.

Setting Up Your First RLSA

Follow these steps to set up your first remarketing audience:

1. Install the Google Ads remarketing tag on your website (or use GA4 audiences, recommended if you already have GA4 set up).
2. In Google Ads, go to Tools & Settings → Shared Library → Audience Manager.
3. Create audience lists: All website visitors (30-day), specific page visitors (e.g., /product/ pages), and cart abandoners (visited /cart/ but not /thank-you/).
4. In your campaign, go to Audiences → Add audience segments → select your lists.
5. Choose Observation or Targeting mode (explained in the next section).
6. Set your bid adjustments per audience segment and monitor for 2-3 weeks before judging results.

Observation vs Targeting Mode

When you add an audience to a campaign, you must choose how it should affect delivery:

• Observation mode: Your ads show to everyone as normal. Google collects performance data broken down by audience. You can set bid adjustments per audience without restricting reach. Start here.
• Targeting mode: Your ads ONLY show to people in the audience list. Dramatically reduces reach but can be extremely cost-efficient for high-value segments like cart abandoners.

Bid Adjustment Strategy

Once you have performance data by audience, apply bid adjustments to maximize ROI. These are starting benchmarks, adjust based on your actual data: