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Digital Advertising

Upgrade Your Paid Search Strategy with RLSA

admin | Jan 18, 2018

google rlsa

Through Google’s Remarketing List for Search Ads (RLSA), you can create a highly-personalized ad experience across multiple platforms to nurture users along your sales funnel.

What is RLSA?

rlsa best practices

Google has set up Remarketing List for Search Ads so that you can serve different ads to specific audiences. Most of the time these are people who have engaged with one of your ads and visited your site, but did not convert.

RLSA allows you to connect remarketing lists from several platforms, including connecting Display, Search, and YouTube audiences to your search ads. You can also create custom audiences in Analytics, whether that be abandoned carts or visitors from Facebook.

 

How does YouTube fit into RLSA?

In the past, Google has prevented YouTube audiences from being used for RLSA (though there was a workaround). Recently, Google has allowed these audiences to be incorporated into your RLSA.

YouTube is the only off-site platform to directly integrate with RLSA. Audiences can be brought into RLSA, so you can serve unique Search and Display ads to those who have engaged with your YouTube videos and TrueView ads on your channel. You can also bring audiences from Search and Display into YouTube, showing them custom videos based on their behavior.

 

Benefits of RLSA Marketing

RLSA allows the advertiser to create custom search ads that are tailored to the user’s intent and behavior. Users can be more accurately guided through the sales funnel, while reducing costs and improving ROI. Also, you can expand your keywords and increase bids with remarketing campaigns because you know they have already engaged with your ads and visited your site.

 

Limitations of RLSA

There are minimum sizes for certain audiences you use within RLSA. Display, YouTube, and Gmail remarketing lists need at least 100 users, while search ads lists require 1,000. Users must stay within a remarketing list for at least 30 days, even if they complete a purchase. There are also certain industries and topics that are barred from remarketing and targeted advertising, including:

  • Religion
  • Personal Identity (Gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity)
  • Certain Health Claims
  • Certain Legal Issues
  • Trade Unions

 

RLSA Example: Marketing a Conference

A company is looking to promote their conference across channels. Search ads are set up to target keywords related to Speaker #1. When someone clicks on the ad and visits the event page, they are then added to the Search Remarketing list. Later, when viewing videos on YouTube, the user does not see the general TrueVew ad for the event; instead, the user sees a remarketing ad featuring the speaker. If they engage with the video, they can be added to a YouTube remarketing list within RLSA, which means you can serve them more specific display and search ads.

Breaking Down Advertising Silos Through RLSA

It can be easy to keep digital marketing channels separate, separate budgets, ads, and reports. But smart agencies can combine the power of each platform to create multiple avenues to reach your potential customers. Through Google’s Remarketing List for Search Ads (RLSA), you can personalize your ads to match the user’s behavior journey and help them navigate through your sales funnel.

Contact us for a second opinion on your paid search strategy.