Using AdWords remarketing lists to exclude prior ad clickers

Posted by Josh on Monday, March 31st, 2014.

Why pay twice for the same visitor? You can save money in AdWords by excluding ad impressions for people who have already clicked on an ad. This may be appropriate if you feel that the first click generates enough awareness that subsequent visits would occur through natural results.

For example, one of our clients is a well-known event brand that is advertising to increase event registrations. Once someone has visited once, they may still intend to register in subsequent visits, but we can see from Google Analytics that they are searching on branded keywords, and for these they own the top search engine results. By excluding repeat ad clicks from the same user, we can shift the advertising money over to new prospects.

It’s relatively straightforward to exclude prior ad clickers, though the interface is slightly confusing (and thus will likely change/improve):

If you have not already done so, setup AdWords remarketing:
- Click on Shared Library in the left-side menu.
- Click on “View >>” under “Audiences”. This will give you the code that you need to add to your website, and it will create an “All Visitors” list.
Click on “All online campaigns” in the left-side menu.
Click on the “Audiences” tab.
Under “Campaign audience exclusions” click on the “+ EXCLUSIONS” button.
Choose the campaigns you would like to add exclusions to.
Select “Remarketing” under “Add campaign exclusions.”
Click on the “>>” button next to the “All visitors” list to add it to “Selected Audiences.”
Click “Close.”
Click “Save.”

Note that the look-back window for the “All visitors” list is only 30 days, and you can’t change it. If you would like to exclude site visitors for longer periods, you will have to create a new list.