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Dynamic remarketing lists: Remarketing for products

Learn about creating dynamic remarketing lists to remarket to customers who have interacted with a specific product.
Note

Dynamic remarketing lists were formerly known as product audiences.

Dynamic remarketing lists pair customers with specific products based on what they have looked at, considered, or already purchased on your website. You can use dynamic remarketing lists in both search campaigns and audience campaigns (not everyone has audience campaigns yet).

Why use dynamic remarketing lists?

Targeted audience reach. Show tailored ads for specific products to people who have already shown purchase intent signals for those very products.

Boosted performance. Dynamic remarketing lists can increase the likelihood of clicks and conversions, and can provide a better return on ad spend than standard remarketing lists.

Easy to use. You can create five types of dynamic remarketing lists — general visitors, product searchers, product viewers, shopping cart abandoners, and past buyers — so you don't need to create a remarketing list for each individual product.

Testing Audiences

Before you start setting up dynamic remarketing, make sure you have:

  • A Microsoft Merchant Center catalog feed. What is Microsoft Merchant Center?
  • A JavaScript UET tag: Create a Microsoft Advertising UET tag and add the UET tag tracking code to every page of your website. You will need to add two new parameters to the UET tag: Page Type and Product ID (this product ID must match the ID in your Microsoft Merchant Center catalog feed). See the below "How do I modify my UET tag for dynamic remarketing?" section for more information.
    • JavaScript is required to ensure you have access to the full functionalities of conversion tracking and remarketing. If you are using a non-JavaScript tag, please switch over to a JavaScript tag.
  • The ability to edit website code: Either you or your webmaster will need to edit your website code.

Using dynamic remarketing

How do I create a dynamic remarketing list? expando image
  1. From the top menu, select Tools > Audiences.
  2. Select Create.
  3. Give this audience a unique name.
  4. For Type, select Dynamic remarketing list.
  5. Select Next.
  6. Select the UET tag you want to use.
  7. For Whom to add to your audience, select which type of dynamic remarketing list you want to target and set the time frame for eligible customers.
    Dynamic remarketing listsWhen to use this list
    General visitorsReach a broader base of your potential customers. These people have visited your website, showing interest in your brand or offerings.
    Product searchersReach users who have shown intent. These people have visited your website and searched for products on your site, showing even more interest in your offerings.
    Product viewersReach users who have shown clear intent. These people have visited your website and viewed your products, showing a clear interest in your offerings.
    Shopping cart abandonersReach users who have shown very strong intent. These people added items to their cart, and while they didn't make a purchase, this shows a very strong interest in your offerings.
    Past buyersReach users who have purchased from you in the past. These people could purchase again, be it the same product or a related product (via a cross-sell or upsell).
  8. Copy the code you see on the page, modify it with the appropriate product ID and page type (see the below "How do I modify my UET tag for dynamic remarketing?" section for more information), and then paste it into your UET tag on your website.
  9. For Tag name, select the UET tag you want to use with this dynamic remarketing list.
  10. Select Save.
Important

A dynamic remarketing list takes up to 24 hours to build, and targeting for it won't take effect until that point.

How do I modify my UET tag for dynamic remarketing? expando image

You need to add custom parameters to your JavaScript UET tag tracking code for dynamic remarketing. If you haven't already added the UET tag tracking code to your website, take a look at How do I add a UET tag to my website?

Add the following JavaScript to the end of the UET tag tracking code in each page of your website:

          
            <script>
          

          
             
             
             window.uetq = window.uetq || [];  
   window.uetq.push ('event', '', {'ecomm_prodid': 'Replace_with_Product_ID', 'ecomm_pagetype': 'Replace_with_Page_Type'});  
          

          
            </script>

Important
  • Both product ID and pagetype must be included on every page you want to update a dynamic remarketing list for. Missing either value would keep your dynamic remarketing list from updating for that page. For example, if you pass product IDs on all of your product pages, but not on your home page, then the "Product viewers" dynamic remarketing list will be updated with visitors to your product pages, but the "General visitors" audience will not record people who visited your home page. To target visitors to pages that cannot pass product IDs for any reason, you can use regular remarketing lists.
  • In the 'event', '', part of the tag, make sure the two single-quotation marks after 'event' remain empty.
  • You can track multiple products in the same UET tag by including an array of product IDs like this: 

    'ecomm_prodid': ['Replace_with_Product_ID_1','Replace_with_Product_ID_2','Replace_with_Product_ID_3']

In the above JavaScript, change the following parameters:

  • Replace_with_Product_ID : Replace this with one of the following product IDs:
    • The exact SKU ID that uniquely identifies a product. This is sometimes called a UPC (universal product code).
    • An item group ID representing a set of variants for the same product. At least one of the variant attributes (size, color, material, pattern, age_group, or gender) must be provided as part of the product feed, and the same variant attribute must be provided for all items within the group.

    Important

    The product ID in your JavaScript code must match an ID in your Microsoft Merchant Center product feed.

  • Replace_with_Page_Type : Replace this with the one of the following values in the right-hand column of this table, depending on the page you will be using this JavaScript in:
    Dynamic remarketing list you're trackingRequired page type
    General visitors'ecomm_pagetype': 'home'
    'ecomm_pagetype': 'category'
    'ecomm_pagetype': 'other'
    Note: Any user not included in the page type for searchresults, product, cart, or purchase will be included in the general visitors audience.
    Product searchers'ecomm_pagetype': 'searchresults'
    Product viewers'ecomm_pagetype': 'product'
    Shopping cart abandoners'ecomm_pagetype': 'cart'
    Past buyers'ecomm_pagetype': 'purchase'

    Note: Customers who buy a product are added to the "past buyers" list and are removed from other lists (for that particular product). For this to work, the UET tag on your purchase confirmation page must send both product ID (ecomm_prodid) and pagetype (ecomm_pagetype).

Important
  • A user and product ID combination can exist in one or more of the following lists: Product searchers, Product viewers, and Cart abandoners.
  • Once a user/product ID is added to the Past buyers list, they are removed from all of the previous four lists. The 'ecomm_pagetype': 'purchase' is required on the purchase page to remove a user from the other lists for that product ID.
  • Similarly, once a user/product ID is added to any one of the following lists, they are removed from General visitors: Product searchers, Product viewers, and Cart abandoners.

To see an example of a dynamic remarketing UET tag tracking code installed in the body of a webpage, visit this webpage (English only), right-select in the webpage, and then select View source or View page source depending on your browser. On this page, you can also define a product ID and page type, and then select a button to trigger a custom event for this dynamic remarketing list. If you use a third-party monitoring tool like Fiddler, you can see the HTTP request generated to bat.bing.com to report each custom event.

Notes
  • As your webpage loads, it triggers the UET tag, resulting in a number of HTTP requests. The most important request is to "bat.bing" (the one that looks like http://bat.bing.com/action/0?ti=...). This request tells Microsoft Advertising about the user visits to your webpage. You can use third-party tools such as Fiddler to monitor all the requests that your browser is making when your webpage loads.
  • For custom events, an additional HTTP request is triggered to report the same to Microsoft Advertising. The request is similar to the bat.bing but it has different parameters to report custom event (as opposed to just page visit).
  • You can validate that your dynamic remarketing UET tag tracking codes are working using the UET Tag Helper.
How do I associate a dynamic remarketing list with a search campaign?expando image
  1. From the top menu, select Tools > Audiences.
  2. Select Create association.
  3. Select the ad group or campaign you want to associate with one or more audiences.
  4. Under Ad group targeting or Campaign targeting, select the audience categories you want to target.
  5. Select your Targeting setting:
    • Bid only: Shows ads to people searching for your ad, with the option to make bid adjustments for the selected audience.
    • Target and bid: Shows ads only to the selected audience, with the option to make bid adjustments.
  6. Adjust the Default bid adjustment if necessary. By default, new targeting associations are set to 15%, but the bid adjustment can range from -90% to +900%.
  7. Under Ad group exclusions or Campaign exclusions, select an audience to exclude, if needed.
  8. Select Save.
How do I set up dynamic remarketing for audience campaigns? expando image
Important

Not everyone has this feature yet. If you don't, don't worry—it's coming soon!

  1. From the collapsible menu on the left, select Campaigns.
  2. Select Create.
  3. For What's the goal of this campaign? select Sell products from your catalog.
  4. Select Standard Shopping for your campaign subtype.
  5. On the What kind of ads do you want to run for this campaign? window, select Audience ads.
  6. Follow the steps for creating an audience campaign as described in this article. Make sure that in step 2 you select the Audience target criteria and your dynamic remarketing list.
Can I use a "Target and bid" setting for one audience list and a "Bid only" setting for another audience list in the same ad group or campaign? expando image
No, you can only select one targeting setting per ad group or campaign that will apply to all your audience lists in that ad group or campaign (either "Target and bid" or "Bid only"). It isn't possible to use different targeting settings in the same ad group or campaign for remarketing lists, in-market audiences, and custom audiences. Whichever setting you've selected most recently ("Target and bid" or "Bid only") overrides any previous settings.

Notes
  • Dynamic remarketing lists are just one of our audience targeting options.
  • You can leverage your dynamic remarketing list for Automotive ads and Tours and activities ads. This way, it'll serve on search and audience networks without UET setup. All you need to do is set up a search campaign and add a target campaign column to your feed, where you'll provide the name of the search campaign.

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