Remarketing is a Google Ads strategy that allows advertisers to re-engage users who have previously interacted with their website or app, either by serving them targeted ads across Google's display and search networks or by reaching them through follow-up email campaigns.
The term is most closely associated with Google's own advertising ecosystem. Within Google Ads, remarketing works by placing a small snippet of tracking code, known as a remarketing tag, on a website. When a visitor lands on a page carrying that tag, their browser is added to a remarketing list. Advertisers can then define audience segments based on specific behaviors, such as visiting a product page without completing a purchase, and serve tailored ads to those segments as they browse other sites within the Google Display Network, watch videos on YouTube, or perform new searches on Google.
A common source of confusion is the relationship between remarketing and retargeting. In practice, the two terms describe nearly identical goals: reconnecting with users who did not convert on a first visit. The distinction is largely one of origin and platform. Retargeting is the broader, more platform-neutral term used across the advertising industry, while remarketing is the label Google itself applies to this capability within Google Ads. Google also extends the term to email-based re-engagement, where customer email lists can be uploaded to Google Ads and matched to signed-in Google users, a feature called Customer Match. This email dimension is one area where Google's definition of remarketing extends slightly beyond what most practitioners mean when they say retargeting.
Remarketing campaigns are typically segmented by audience intent. A user who viewed a pricing page is treated differently from one who simply visited the homepage, and the ad creative, bid adjustments, and messaging are adjusted accordingly. This segmentation makes remarketing one of the higher-return tactics in paid search and display advertising, since the audience has already demonstrated some level of interest.
From a measurement perspective, remarketing interacts closely with an account's attribution model. Because remarketing ads often appear later in a conversion path, their contribution to a final conversion may be credited differently depending on whether the account uses last-click, data-driven, or another attribution approach. Understanding this interaction is important for evaluating the true performance of remarketing campaigns within Google Ads.
Remarketing lists can also be applied to Search campaigns, a feature Google calls Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA). This allows advertisers to adjust bids or show different ads when a known past visitor performs a new search, combining the intent signal of a live search query with the behavioral history of a prior site visit.