Why Aren’t My Remarketing Ads Showing?

Remarketing is a feature on Google that allows your ads to easily reach people who have previously visited your website or a certain page on your site. Your ad appears to previous visitors via the Google Display Network or as they search for terms related to your product on Google. Remarketing is a great way to increase your ROI and to encourage people to return to your site and complete a purchase.

Once you add the Google remarketing code to your website, the code begins to tag visitors through their browser cookies and a remarketing list begins to populate. Your remarketing list needs to have at least 100 members within the last 30 days before your ads can begin to show to people.

If your remarketing list has fewer than 100 members, then your ads will not show. This is one reason why your ads may not be showing when you first set up a remarketing campaign; however, there are several other reasons why your ads may not be showing.

Your membership duration has expired.

Membership duration is the number of days a user’s cookie stays on a remarketing list. By default, the membership duration is 30 days, but you are able to adjust the number from 30 days up to 540 days depending on how long you expect your ad to be relevant for a user.

The user is removed from the remarketing list at the end of the membership duration if that person doesn’t record any new activity on your site. After the user is removed from the remarketing list, they will stop seeing your ads.

Your remarketing lists are too specific.

To easily target your ads to a certain group of people, you can create certain remarketing lists. For example, you can create lists for visitors of a certain page, visitors of a page during specific dates, visitors of a page with a specific tag, visitors who didn’t visit a certain page, etc.

If your remarketing list is too specific, then your list may not have enough members and, therefore, may not show.

Your location settings are too specific.

Although you want to be targeting the right people geographically, don’t be afraid to expand your location settings for remarketing ads.

Your targeting reach is too narrow.

You can add additional targeting methods to your ad groups to have more control over where your ads will show. You can add targeting methods like keywords, age, interest, placements, gender, and parental status. However, if you add more than one targeting method to your ad group, you will narrow your reach, and your ads might not show.

You aren’t bidding appropriately.

Bids on the Display Network are typically a lot less than what you would usually pay for a text ad on the Google Search Network. Although bids are cheaper than text ads, you still want to make sure you are bidding appropriately because this will impact how often your ad will show.

You excluded too many site categories.

Site Category Options let you exclude different Display Network sites, categories, or ad placements where you don’t want your ads to show. Some of the categories include social networks, error pages, live streaming videos, etc. All websites on the Display Network have a category, so if you exclude all of the categories, then your ads will not run.

You excluded your IP address.

AdWords allows you to exclude Internet Protocol (IP) addresses so that you can block certain networks from seeing your ads. For example, if you are seeing your own ads on the Display Network, then you are wasting unwanted ad impressions and possibly clicks that may be coming from you or someone at your company. If you exclude your company’s IP address, then you will not be able to see your ads, but other people outside of your IP address will be able to.

You reached your impression cap.

AdWords allows you to limit the number of time your ads will show to the same person per day, per week, or per month. Frequency capping helps to control how many times each person will see your ad so that it can be shown to new people. For example, if you set an impression cap of five impressions per day, then one user will only see your ad a maximum of five times per day.

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