Remarketing is a targeting method that shows ads to people who have previously visited your website or interacted with your content. Standard and dynamic remarketing are the two main types in Google Ads, and they differ in how ad content is generated and how much setup is required.
What is standard remarketing?
Standard remarketing shows a fixed set of pre-designed display ads to defined audience segments, regardless of the specific pages they visited or products they viewed. You create the audience list (for example, all website visitors or visitors to a specific page), design the ads in advance, and set the campaign live. The same creative is shown to everyone in the audience. Standard remarketing is straightforward to set up, does not require a product feed, and works across any type of business including service businesses with no product catalogue.
What is dynamic remarketing?
Dynamic remarketing generates ads automatically using a product feed, pulling in the specific products or services a user viewed during their previous visit. If someone looked at a particular item on your site, the ad they see will feature that item, including its image, name, and price, drawn directly from the feed. This personalisation typically produces higher click-through and conversion rates than standard remarketing, because the ad reflects what the user was already considering. Dynamic remarketing requires a Google Merchant Center product feed and is best suited to e-commerce businesses with a sizeable product catalogue.
How do standard and dynamic remarketing compare?
The key differences across setup, audience, and ad delivery are:
| Factor | Standard Remarketing | Dynamic Remarketing |
|---|---|---|
| Ad content | Fixed, pre-designed creatives | Auto-generated from product feed |
| Setup required | Audience lists and ad creatives | Merchant Center feed plus audience lists |
| Best suited to | Service businesses, brand awareness | E-commerce with product catalogue |
| Personalisation level | Audience-level | Individual product or service level |
| Product feed required | No | Yes (Google Merchant Center) |
Which type of remarketing should you use?
Standard remarketing is the right starting point for service businesses, or for brand awareness campaigns where a consistent creative matters more than personalisation. Dynamic remarketing is worth the additional setup effort for e-commerce businesses, where showing the exact product a user viewed typically outperforms a generic ad. Some campaigns use both in parallel: standard remarketing for brand-level messages across all website visitors, and dynamic remarketing for high-intent visitors who viewed specific products or pricing pages. At Phoenix Media, we recommend starting with standard remarketing to gather initial data, then layering in dynamic where product feeds are available and justified by catalogue size.