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Have you ever visited an online store, looked at a product, left without buying it—and then noticed an advertisement for that product while browsing another website?
That’s remarketing in action.
Remarketing is one of the most effective ways to reconnect with people who have already interacted with your business. Instead of spending your entire advertising budget trying to reach completely new audiences, you can re-engage people who have already visited your website, viewed your products or services, or interacted with your digital properties.
If you’re searching for the answer to “What two types of remarketing can be used on Google Display Ads?”, the two commonly discussed approaches are:
Standard Remarketing
Dynamic Remarketing
Both can help bring previous visitors back to your website, but they work differently and are suited to different marketing objectives.
In this guide, we’ll explain how each works, when to use it, examples, setup requirements, and practical strategies for getting better results from Google Display remarketing.
Remarketing allows advertisers to show ads to people who have previously interacted with their business.
For example, someone may:
Visit your website
View a particular product
Read a service page
Visit a pricing page
Add a product to their shopping cart
Start filling out a lead form
Complete a purchase
Interact with your app
You can then create data segments based on these interactions and use them to reach relevant users with advertising.
Google notes that your data segments can be used to reach people who have previously interacted with your website or app across eligible Google inventory, including the Display Network.
Most website visitors don’t convert on their first visit.
Someone might visit your website today because they’re researching a product or comparing different companies. They may need several days—or even weeks—before they’re ready to make a purchase.
Remarketing helps you stay visible during that decision-making process.
Think of it as:
Visitor → Leaves Website → Sees Relevant Ad → Returns → Converts
The two approaches traditionally referred to as standard remarketing and dynamic remarketing are:
Let’s look at both in detail.
Standard remarketing allows you to show display ads to people who have previously visited your website or interacted with your business.
The advertiser determines the audience and creates the advertising message or creative.
For example, suppose you operate a digital marketing agency.
Someone visits your:
PPC Services → Google Ads Management → Pricing
but doesn’t submit a contact form.
You could create a data segment for visitors to your PPC service pages and show them ads such as:
Need Better Google Ads Results?
Get expert PPC management designed to generate qualified leads.
The ad doesn’t necessarily have to show the exact page or service the visitor viewed. Instead, the campaign can use a relevant message designed to bring that visitor back.
The basic journey looks like this:
1. User visits your website
2. Google tag / measurement setup identifies eligible users
3. User becomes part of an appropriate data segment
4. User leaves your website
5. Your Display campaign can reach that audience
6. User sees your advertisement
7. User returns to your website
8. User completes a conversion
Google’s current terminology increasingly refers to remarketing audiences as your data segments, but the underlying concept remains familiar to advertisers: reaching people who have previously interacted with your business.
You don’t have to put every website visitor into one large audience.
You can build more meaningful segments around user behavior.
For example:
| Audience | Possible Remarketing Message |
|---|---|
| All website visitors | Brand reminder |
| Product page visitors | Product-focused offer |
| Pricing page visitors | Free consultation |
| Cart abandoners | Complete your purchase |
| Service page visitors | Request a quote |
| Blog visitors | Download a guide |
| Previous customers | New product/service promotion |
This segmentation can make your advertising considerably more relevant.
Standard remarketing is particularly useful when:
You have a service-based business
You don’t have a large product catalog
You want to promote a specific offer
You want to target visitors based on website behavior
You want more control over your advertising message
You want to re-engage previous visitors without showing specific products
Imagine someone visits your Web Development Services page but doesn’t contact you.
Instead of showing them a generic company advertisement, you could create a remarketing campaign promoting:
“Looking for a Custom Web Development Partner?”
with a CTA such as:
Get a Free Consultation
This is especially useful for B2B companies where the buying cycle may take longer.
Dynamic remarketing takes personalization a step further.
Instead of simply showing a general advertisement to previous visitors, Google can use information about the products or services they interacted with to create more relevant ads.
Google describes dynamic remarketing as showing previous visitors ads featuring products or services they viewed on a website or app.
For example:
A customer visits an eCommerce website and views:
Nike Running Shoes – Product A
They leave without purchasing.
A dynamic remarketing campaign may subsequently show an ad featuring that product or other relevant products from the advertiser’s feed.
Standard remarketing:
“You visited our website. Come back.”
Dynamic remarketing:
“You looked at this product. Here it is again.”
Dynamic remarketing combines several components:
Website/App User Behavior
Product or Service Feed
Dynamic Remarketing Tag / Custom Parameters
Google Ads
=
Personalized Ads
Google requires a product or service feed for dynamic remarketing. The feed contains information such as unique item IDs, prices, images and other relevant details. For retail businesses, the product feed is generally managed through Google Merchant Center.
The website’s dynamic remarketing tagging also associates user interactions with relevant feed items.
Imagine you own an online fashion store.
A visitor browses:
Men’s Jackets
They then view:
Black Leather Jacket – ₹5,999
but leave without purchasing.
With dynamic remarketing, your advertising can use feed and user interaction data to create a personalized ad experience around relevant products.
The user may see something like:
Still Looking for the Perfect Jacket?
[Product Image]
Black Leather Jacket
₹5,999
Shop Now
This is much more personalized than showing the same generic banner to every website visitor.
This is an important point many advertisers miss.
Dynamic remarketing can also be used for certain service-based businesses.
Google supports dynamic remarketing using feeds containing products or services.
For example, a travel company could potentially use a service feed containing:
Hotel packages
Holiday packages
Destinations
Flights
Travel services
A real estate company could potentially structure relevant inventory around:
Properties
Locations
Property types
Price ranges
The exact implementation depends on the business type, feed structure, tagging and Google Ads requirements.
Here’s a simple comparison:
| Feature | Standard Remarketing | Dynamic Remarketing |
|---|---|---|
| Targets previous visitors | Yes | Yes |
| Uses audience/data segments | Yes | Yes |
| Personalized by viewed item | Limited | Yes |
| Product/service feed required | No | Yes |
| Dynamic product information | No | Yes |
| Best for service businesses | Excellent | Depends on business/feed |
| Best for eCommerce | Good | Excellent |
| Setup complexity | Lower | Higher |
| Scalability for large catalogs | Limited | Excellent |
| Creative personalization | Advertiser-controlled | More automated/dynamic |
The biggest difference is how much the ad is personalized based on what the visitor did on your website.
There isn’t one universal winner.
The right option depends on your business model.
You sell services
You have a small number of products
You want full control over messaging
You are promoting a consultation or lead-generation offer
You don’t have a suitable product/service feed
You want a simpler setup
You operate an eCommerce store
You have a large product catalog
Your products have structured feed information
Users frequently browse multiple products
You want product-level personalization
You want to automate creative variations at scale
For a 20-product website, manually creating highly targeted campaigns may be manageable.
For a website with 20,000 products, dynamic remarketing becomes far more attractive.
Remarketing works because the audience already has some level of familiarity with your business.
Compare these two users:
Never heard of your company.
Visited your website yesterday and viewed your pricing page.
User B has already demonstrated some level of interest.
That doesn’t guarantee a conversion, but it gives you a valuable behavioral signal.
Google highlights several benefits of using your data segments, including focused advertising, reaching previous visitors, and using automated bidding to optimize campaign performance.
Instead of creating one audience called “All Visitors,” consider building different segments around the customer journey.
Useful for general brand recall.
Message:
“Still Looking for a Better Solution?”
Target people who demonstrated product interest.
Message:
“Find the Product You Were Looking For.”
One of the most valuable eCommerce audiences.
Message:
“Your Items Are Still Waiting.”
Consider users who visited pages such as:
Pricing
Contact
Demo
Quote
Checkout
These users may have stronger purchase intent.
Depending on your measurement setup, you can build audiences around meaningful engagement rather than simply page visits.
For example:
Multiple page views
Important service pages
Product interactions
Specific conversion steps
Don’t always exclude previous customers.
You may want to advertise:
New products
Upgrades
Related products
Cross-sells
Renewals
Maintenance plans
Create separate audiences for users who already converted.
This allows you to decide whether they should be:
Excluded, upsold, cross-sold, or nurtured.
One common mistake is showing the same advertisement too frequently.
Imagine someone visits your website once and then sees your advertisement:
10 times a day for two weeks.
Instead of building trust, you may create ad fatigue.
A better strategy is to consider:
Audience size
Campaign objective
User intent
Conversion window
Creative variation
Frequency management
Budget
Google also provides automated bidding and other controls that can help advertisers optimize delivery and manage campaign performance.
The exact setup can vary depending on your campaign type, website and tracking configuration, but the overall process looks like this.
Make sure your website has the appropriate Google tagging and measurement setup.
Google Tag Manager can be useful for implementing and managing tags.
Think about the different stages of your customer’s journey.
For example:
All Visitors
→ Service Visitors
→ Pricing Visitors
→ Lead Form Visitors
→ Converted Users
Create audience segments based on relevant website behavior and business objectives.
Google’s current interface uses the term “your data segments” for these first-party audience lists.
Select the appropriate campaign objective and configure your audience targeting.
Make sure your targeting and exclusions align with your campaign strategy.
For standard remarketing, create relevant display creatives that communicate:
The value proposition
The offer
A strong CTA
Brand identity
A clear reason to return
For dynamic remarketing, provide the required feed and assets.
Don’t judge remarketing campaigns only by:
Impressions
Clicks
CTR
Track meaningful business outcomes such as:
Purchases
Qualified leads
Revenue
Cost per acquisition
ROAS
Lead quality
This is another area that often causes confusion.
Dynamic remarketing and dynamic prospecting are not the same thing.
Targets people who have already interacted with your website or app.
Uses product/service feed information and Google’s systems to find new potential customers, rather than focusing only on people who have previously interacted with your business.
Google specifically distinguishes dynamic prospecting from dynamic remarketing: prospecting is designed to acquire new users, while dynamic remarketing focuses on previous visitors/users.
So if you’re writing a campaign strategy, don’t treat these as interchangeable.
Someone who viewed your homepage isn’t necessarily as valuable as someone who visited your checkout page.
Better: Segment audiences according to intent.
Users can become blind to repetitive advertising.
Better: Rotate creatives, messages and offers where appropriate.
Why continue showing a “Buy Now” advertisement to someone who already purchased?
Better: Build appropriate conversion exclusions or separate customer audiences.
A great remarketing ad cannot fix a poor landing page.
Your landing page should have:
Clear messaging
Strong CTA
Fast loading
Mobile-friendly design
Trust signals
Easy navigation
Relevant content
A remarketing campaign can generate clicks without generating profitable business.
Better: Optimize toward actual conversions and revenue where reliable conversion data is available.
Remarketing relies on user data and tagging, so privacy and consent requirements matter.
Google notes that advertisers must follow its policies for personalized advertising, and sensitive categories may have restrictions on using data for audience targeting.
Make sure your website’s consent management and tagging implementation are configured appropriately for the markets you target.
Let’s say you operate an online electronics store.
A potential customer:
Day 1:
Views a laptop.
Day 2:
Returns and compares two laptops.
Day 3:
Adds one to the cart.
Day 4:
Leaves without purchasing.
Instead of showing the same advertisement to every visitor, your remarketing strategy can reflect the user’s position in the buying journey.
General product promotion.
Relevant product-focused messaging.
Purchase reminder.
Accessories or complementary products.
This is where audience segmentation and dynamic remarketing can become particularly powerful.
The two commonly discussed types are standard remarketing and dynamic remarketing.
Standard remarketing shows ads to people who previously interacted with your website or business, while dynamic remarketing can personalize ads using products or services they viewed and information from a relevant feed.
Not necessarily.
Dynamic remarketing is particularly useful for businesses with large product or service catalogs and strong product-level browsing behavior.
Standard remarketing can be more practical for service businesses, lead generation and campaigns where you want greater control over the advertising message.
Yes. Google states that a product or service feed is required for dynamic remarketing campaigns.
Yes, dynamic remarketing can support products and services, depending on the business type and feed requirements.
Absolutely.
For example, a B2B company could remarket to people who visited:
Service pages
Pricing pages
Case studies
Contact pages
Demo pages
The goal could be to bring them back and encourage a consultation, demo request or enquiry.
There isn’t one ideal duration for every business.
Consider your:
Sales cycle
Product price
Buying frequency
Customer journey
Conversion window
Audience size
A low-cost product may require a shorter remarketing window, while a high-value B2B service may require a much longer consideration period.
So, what two types of remarketing can be used on Google Display Ads?
The straightforward answer is:
Reach previous website visitors with relevant display advertising based on the audience segments you create.
Go a step further by using product or service feeds and user interaction data to deliver more personalized ads featuring relevant products or services.
The best choice depends on your business.
Service business?
Start with well-segmented standard remarketing.
Large eCommerce catalog?
Dynamic remarketing can provide a much more scalable and personalized approach.
And remember: successful remarketing isn’t simply about showing an ad to someone who visited your website. It’s about showing the right message, to the right audience, at the right stage of the buying journey.
When combined with accurate conversion tracking, strong landing pages, thoughtful audience segmentation and compelling creative, remarketing can become an important part of a performance marketing strategy.
If your remarketing campaigns are generating clicks but not enough leads or sales, the problem may not be the audience alone. Tracking, segmentation, bidding, creative, landing-page experience and conversion quality all need to work together.
A professional Google Ads / PPC strategy can help identify where your funnel is losing potential customers and turn more returning visitors into qualified leads and customers.
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