What Can Google Ads Do with Audiences from Google Analytics?

Pairing Google Ads with Google Analytics lets you go beyond keywords to target users based on how they actually behave on your website. This moves your ad campaigns from guessing what people want to knowing what they’ve already shown interest in. This article shows you how to build powerful audiences in Google Analytics and use them to supercharge your Google Ads performance.

Why You Should Use Google Analytics Audiences in Google Ads

Think of it it this way: Google Ads knows a user's intent based on what they search for, while Google Analytics knows their behavior once they land on your site. By themselves, each tells half the story. When you link them, you get the complete picture.

Without this connection, your retargeting campaigns are often limited to simple lists like "all website visitors." This is better than nothing, but it treats a person who bounced after two seconds the same as someone who read three blog posts, visited your pricing page, and added a product to their cart. They are clearly not the same.

By building audiences in Google Analytics, you can create hyper-specific segments of users to target in Google Ads. This allows you to:

• Improve Ad Relevance: Show tailored ads to users based on the specific pages they visited, content they engaged with, or actions they took.
• Increase Conversion Rates: Re-engage hot prospects, like cart abandoners or users who viewed your demo page, with a timely offer to bring them back.
• Optimize Ad Spend: Focus your budget on the most engaged and highest-value users, while excluding those who have already converted or shown low interest.
• Find New Customers: Use your best-performing audiences as a seed to create "Similar Segments" in Google Ads, finding new people who look just like your ideal customers.

Getting Started: Linking Google Ads and Analytics

Before you can start building powerful audiences, you need to make sure your accounts are properly connected and configured. If you haven't done this already, it only takes a few minutes.

Step 1: Link Your Accounts

First things first, you need to tell Google Analytics and Google Ads that they can talk to each other. This is simple, but it’s a non-negotiable step.

1. Navigate to the Admin section of your Google Analytics 4 property (the gear icon in the bottom-left).
2. Under the Property column, find Product Links and click on Google Ads Links.
3. Click the blue Link button in the top right.
4. Click Choose Google Ads accounts and select the Ads account you want to link. Click Confirm.
5. Click Next, and leave the default settings for "Enable Personalized Advertising" and "Enable Auto-Tagging" turned on. These are crucial.
6. Click Next one more time, then review and Submit.

Your accounts are now linked. It can take up to 24 hours for the data to fully sync.

Step 2: Enable Google Signals

To use remarketing features, you must enable Google signals. This feature collects data from users who are signed into their Google accounts and have turned on Ads Personalization. This is the underlying technology that makes sophisticated audience targeting possible.

1. In GA4, go back to Admin.
2. Under the Property column, click on Data Settings, then Data Collection.
3. Find the "Google signals data collection" toggle and make sure it is switched On.
4. You'll also need to acknowledge the user data policies.

With this enabled, Google Analytics starts gathering the necessary information to build valuable remarketing lists.

How to Build Your First Audience in Google Analytics 4

Once your accounts are linked and a day or so has passed, you can start building audiences. Let's create a foundational audience: "Engaged Non-Converters." These are users who have shown real interest in your site but haven’t yet become a lead or customer.

1. In your GA4 property, go to Admin.
2. Under the Property column, find Audience in the "Data display" list and click it.
3. Click the blue New audience button.
4. You’ll see options to create a custom audience or use suggested templates. We’ll Create a custom audience.
5. Give your audience a clear name, like "Engaged Visitors - Last 30 Days."
6. First, let's define "engaged." Click Add new condition and search for the dimension "Session duration." Let's set it to be greater than (>) 60 seconds. This includes people who spent at least a minute on your site.
7. Add another condition for an "event" and select page_view. Set the parameter to event_count greater than (>) 2. This means they viewed at least three pages.
8. Now, the crucial step: we must exclude people who have already converted. Click Add group to exclude.
9. Inside "Exclude users when," set a condition where the event is your primary conversion. This might be purchase for an e-commerce store or generate_lead for a B2B site.
10. Set the membership duration. For this type of audience, 30 days is a good starting point.
11. Click Save.

That's it! Your new audience will start populating with users who meet these criteria. Because you enabled sharing when linking your accounts, this audience will automatically become available to target in your Google Ads account within 24-48 hours. You'll find it under Tools and Settings > Shared Library > Audience Manager.

5 Powerful Types of Audiences to Build

Your first audience is just the beginning. The real power comes from creating different segments for different campaign goals. Here are five highly effective audience types you can create.

1. The Classic Remarketing Audience (Engaged Users)

This is a broader version of the audience we just built and is the bread and butter of remarketing. The goal is to reconnect with anyone who has shown more than a passing interest in your brand.

• Who they are: Users who have spent meaningful time on your site, visited multiple pages, or interacted with key site elements.
• How to build it: Set conditions based on sessions greater than 1, session_duration greater than X seconds, or an event like view_promotion.
• Why it works: These users already know who you are. A gentle reminder can be all it takes to bring them back to your site when they're ready to make a decision. They are much warmer leads than someone who has never heard of you.

2. The High-Intent Cart Abandoner

This is perhaps the most valuable audience for any e-commerce or lead generation business. These users were on the brink of converting but got distracted.

• Who they are: Users who started the checkout process or initiated direct contact but didn't finish.
• How to build it: Create an audience that includes users who triggered an add_to_cart event OR a begin_checkout event, but then create an exclusion for users who triggered a purchase event.
• Why it works: This audience has shown the strongest possible buying intent. Showing them an ad with the exact product they left behind, perhaps with a small discount or a free shipping offer, has an incredibly high conversion rate.

3. Content-Specific or Topic-Based Audiences

This approach allows for extremely relevant ad copy. Instead of showing everyone a generic ad about your brand, you target them based on the specific content they consumed.

• Who they are: Users who read specific blog posts, visited a particular product category, or downloaded a guide on a specific topic.
• How to build it: Use the page_location dimension and filter for URLs that contain your target keywords (e.g., page_location contains "/blog/seo-tips/" or "/products/womens-running-shoes/").
• Why it works: It enables you to align your advertising message perfectly with the user's last known interest. If someone read three articles about email marketing, you can show them a highly relevant ad for your email marketing software or course. This feels helpful, not intrusive.

4. High-Value Customer Audiences (For Upsells and Lookalikes)

Your best customers are a goldmine of data. You can target them for repeat business or use their characteristics to find more people just like them.

• Who they are: Either use a GA predictive audience like "Likely 7-day purchasers" or create one based on LTV (Lifetime Value).
• How to build it: Create an audience with a condition where the purchase event has a value parameter greater than a certain threshold (e.g., > $100). Or, for GA4 properties with sufficient data, you can build a predictive audience to target users who are likely to make a high-value purchase soon.
• Why it works: First, retarget these users for cross-sells or new announcements. More powerfully, though, they become your "seed list" for Similar Segments campaigns in Google Ads. Google will analyze the traits of your best customers and find new people who share those characteristics. This is one of the most effective ways to scale your advertising.

5. The Post-Conversion Audience (For Exclusions and Updates)

Audiences are not just for targeting, they're also for exclusion.

• Who they are: Anyone who has already converted or become a customer.
• How to build it: Create an audience that includes users who triggered a purchase event or any generate_lead event.
• Why it works: You don’t want to waste advertising budget showing ads to people who have already bought your product or service unless it's purposeful. Creating a "Converted Customers" audience lets you exclude them from prospecting campaigns. Alternatively, retarget them with updates about new features or products to encourage repeat business.

Best Practices for Using Analytics Audiences in Google Ads

Building great audiences is half the battle, the next is using them effectively in your campaigns. Here are a few key tips:

• Tailor Creative: Design ad creative that resonates with the audience's known interests. Show images of products they left in their cart or a reminder to "Don't forget about this!"
• Match Your Ad Copy: For visited pages about social media marketing, don’t hit them with a generic "Learn More" message. Use a headline like "Ready to Boost Your ROI?".
• Use Bid Modifiers: In your ads, you can bid more aggressively on high-intent audiences like cart abandoners (assigning a higher CPA or ROAS bid) to ensure your message reaches this crucial audience.
• Exclude Existing Customers: It’s important to create audiences that exclude current customers from prospecting campaigns. For example, exclude a "Converted Customers" audience from your ongoing campaigns to avoid wasting spend.
• Test and Refine: Monitor your audience performance in the Google Ads Audience Manager. If an audience isn’t converting, tweak the conditions or who’s in it. You should be testing and refining them regularly.

Final Thoughts

Connecting your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts takes your marketing from blind guessing to truly informed targeting. It empowers marketers by harnessing data to create more profitable campaigns. Using these insights, you’re not just advertising blindly, you're informing every ad dollar spent with actual user data.

We know that linking these tools can be challenging, but once mastered, Google Ads and Google Analytics together form an unbeatable combination in the realm of digital marketing. Consider Graphed to simplify your media management and ensure your marketing strategies are always aligned and efficient.