SOP 013: Adding Google Ads Remarketing Tag to a site (using GTM)
Perfectly add the Google Ads Tag to a site using Google Tag Manager.
Last Updated / Reviewed: 09/12/2024
Execution Time: 10-20 minutes
🚀 Goal: To add the Google Ads Tag to your website
🤞 Ideal Outcome: Your tag is properly installed, and your remarketing audience is now being built inside your Google Ads Account.
🤔 Why this is important: Remarketing gives you the chance to reach out to visitors that showed interest in your product or service, by going to your website but might have left without having performed all the actions you would want them to do.
🧐 Where this is done In your Google Ads account (using the latest interface).
🗓️ When this is done: Only once, when you want to add the remarketing tag for the first time.
👨 Who does this: The person responsible for website management or paid advertising.
__⚠️Prerequisites or requirements: __You need a Google Ads Account (using the new Google Ads interface) to be able to perform this SOP. If you don’t have a Google Ads Account set up yet, you can see how to do that in SOP 014 (web version). You should also be using Google Tag Manager to add tags to your site, you can see how to do that SOP 004 (web version).
Click here to get the most up-to-date version of this SOP
Get your Google Ads Tag Code
01▸ Log into your Google Ads account by going to https://ads.google.com
02▸ Go to your Audience Manager either by following this link, or by clicking the icon labeled "Tools" on the left sidebar, followed by “Audience Manager” under "Shared Library":
03▸ Under the audience manager menu, click on "Your data sources" and then click on "Set up tag" under "Google Ads Tag":
04▸ Under "Remarketing," select "Only collect general website visit data to show ads to your website visitors."
If you have users in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Montana, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Utah, you can also choose to restrict data processing for these users.
05▸ Click "Save and continue."
06▸ Under ‘Tag setup,’ click on ‘Use Google Tag Manager.’
07▸ Copy your Conversion ID to your clipboard and click "Continue."
08▸ Click "Done."
Add your Google Ads Tag to Google Tag Manager.
01▸ Go to https://tagmanager.google.com and select your account.
02▸ We are now going to create a variable to store the Google Ads Conversion ID. Inside the account workspace, click ‘Variables’ in the left sidebar.
03▸ Under ‘User-Defined Variables’ click “New”:
Note: Using ‘variables’ to store IDs ensures that, in the future, you can add new tags that use that ID efficiently. In addition to that, if you need to change the ID in all tags (e.g: you change your ad agency), you only need to update it once by updating the variable value.
04▸ Rename the variable by clicking on the "Untitled Virable" text. You will want to give it a name that easily identifies what this variable is - (e.g., GoogleAdsTag-CID)
05▸ Click on ‘Choose a variable type to begin set-up.’ A list will slide from the right; scroll down and select “Constant” from the list:
06▸ In the "Value" field, paste the Conversion ID you previously copied from the Google Ads Tag setup.
07▸ Click "Save."
08▸ Next, click on ‘Tags’ in the left sidebar, and click "New."
09▸ Rename your tag.
Note: When creating new tags, it is recommended to define a naming convention from the beginning, this keeps your Google Tag Manager set up neatly organized and easy to maintain for many years to come. For example, "[Abbreviated Name Of Tool]_[Use for this tag]" is a good start (e.g: “GoogleAds_RemarketingCode”)
10▸ Click the "Tag configuration" section, and select ‘Google Ads’ from the list:
11▸ Next, select "Google Ads Remarketing."
12▸ In the ‘Conversion ID’ field, select the variable you created in the previous step.
Click on the brick icon next to the field.
Scroll down to look for the variable you created.
13▸ Scroll down and click on the "Triggering" section and then select ‘All pages’
14▸ Click "Save" to finish setting up your tag.
15▸ You should now be able to see in the top right corner at least 2 workspace changes. If so, you’re now ready to press “Submit”.
16▸ In the Submission Configuration panel, you will be given the chance to add a name and description to this version. After you have done so, hit “Publish”.
Note: Adding a name and description is optional but recommended. You should enter the information here that will make it easy to know what changes are being made.
17▸ That’s it! You should be able to see the summary of the changes that were just made:
Note: Make sure your privacy policy is updated, and your users are consenting to this new data collection and usage according to the legislations in place.