Google display ads and remarketing agency

Google display ads and remarketing ads that bring buyers back

Most people who visit your website leave without calling, booking or buying. They are comparing options, checking prices or simply not ready yet. Google display ads and remarketing ads keep your business in front of those people while they read news sites, watch YouTube, check Gmail and use apps, so when they are ready to act, your name is the one they remember. Canada Create™ is a display advertising agency that plans, designs, builds and manages Google display and retargeting campaigns for businesses across Canada and the United States, and we measure them by the enquiries and sales they produce rather than by impressions.

Our team runs search, display, YouTube and remarketing campaigns side by side from our office at 126 Willowdale Ave., Suite #3, Toronto, and our designers produce the ad creative in house. Strategy, audiences, banners and landing pages are planned together by one team instead of being handed between separate suppliers who never speak to each other. That matters with display, because a campaign is only as good as the weakest link between the tag on your site, the audience it builds, the banner people see and the page they land on.

What Google display ads and remarketing actually are

Display advertising and remarketing are often described as one thing, but they are two separate ideas that work best together. Display is where your ads appear. Remarketing is who sees them.

The Google Display Network

The Google Display Network is the set of websites, apps and Google properties where Google can show image and video ads. It includes news and magazine sites, blogs, niche publishers, mobile apps, YouTube and Gmail. Google describes the network as reaching the large majority of internet users. Display campaigns use that network to show your ads to people who match audiences you choose, or to people reading pages about topics you choose.

Remarketing and retargeting: the same idea with two names

Remarketing and retargeting mean the same thing in everyday use: showing ads to people who have already interacted with your business. Google uses the word remarketing, and inside Google Ads these audiences are now called your data segments. Other ad platforms and many marketers use retargeting. Either way, the audience is made up of people who visited your website, used your app, watched your videos or appear in a customer list you uploaded with their consent.

Can you retarget with Google Ads?

Yes. Google Ads supports retargeting across display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, apps and search. Once the Google tag is on your website and your data segments are building, you can show remarketing ads to past visitors in a Display campaign, a Demand Gen campaign, a Performance Max campaign or a video campaign, and you can adjust search bids or ads for people who have visited before. Remarketing is one of the most practical ways to get more value from traffic you have already paid for through search ads, SEO or social media.

How to do remarketing in Google Ads, step by step

Remarketing in Google Ads follows a clear sequence. Each step depends on the one before it, which is why we never launch creative until the tracking is right.

1. Install the Google tag. The Google tag, placed directly or through Google Tag Manager, records visits and actions on your site. For dynamic remarketing it also passes the product or service IDs people viewed.
2. Connect consent handling. Your site shows a clear consent notice, and the tag respects the choices visitors make. This step protects your visitors and your ad account.
3. Link Google Analytics 4. Linking GA4 with Google Ads lets us build audiences from richer behaviour, such as people who scrolled a pricing page or started a booking.
4. Build data segments. We create segments by page visited, action taken and time since the visit, with membership durations that match your sales cycle.
5. Let the lists fill. Google needs a minimum number of active users in a segment before it will serve ads to it, so smaller sites need patience here.
6. Create the campaign. We choose the campaign type, add the segments, set frequency limits, exclusions and bidding, and attach creative that speaks to what each segment did.
7. Measure and adjust. Conversion tracking tells us which segments and ads produce calls, forms, bookings and sales, and budget moves toward them.

Types of remarketing you can run on Google

Google offers several remarketing methods. People often ask which two types of remarketing can be used on Google display ads. The usual answer is standard remarketing and dynamic remarketing. In practice there are more options around them, and a strong program often combines three or four.

Standard remarketing

Standard remarketing shows past visitors the same set of ads for a segment, based on the pages they visited. Someone who read your roofing page sees roofing ads, and someone who read your financing page sees an ad about payment options. It suits service businesses with a clear set of offers and is usually the first thing we build.

Dynamic remarketing

Dynamic remarketing goes a step further by showing each person the exact products or services they viewed. It pulls names, images and prices from a feed, usually your Google Merchant Center product feed for retailers or a business data feed for services, travel, real estate, education and jobs. The ad a shopper sees is built on the fly from the items they looked at, often with related items beside them. Dynamic remarketing needs the tag to pass the right item IDs, a feed that matches those IDs and a campaign linked to that feed. We handle all three and check that they stay in step when your catalogue changes.

Dynamic prospecting

Dynamic prospecting uses the same feed to show relevant products to new people who have not visited yet, based on what Google predicts they are likely to want. It pairs well with dynamic remarketing for ecommerce stores with large catalogues.

Customer list remarketing

Customer Match lets you upload a list of customers who have given you their contact details, so you can show them ads when they are signed in to Google services. It suits cross-selling to past clients, winning back customers who have gone quiet and excluding existing customers from acquisition campaigns. Google has its own eligibility requirements for Customer Match, and your list must be collected with the consent your privacy notice describes.

Video remarketing

Video remarketing reaches people who watched your YouTube videos, visited your channel or engaged with your ads. It tells a fuller story than a static banner and works well for services people need to understand before they buy. Our team also runs YouTube advertising campaigns that feed these audiences in the first place, and our videography team can produce short ads designed for this use.

Remarketing lists for search ads

Remarketing lists can also be used in search campaigns. When a past visitor searches again, we can bid more, show a different message or target broader keywords that would be too costly for cold traffic. This often improves results on your most valuable keywords without raising the overall budget.

Examples of remarketing ads that work

Remarketing is easiest to understand through examples. These are the kinds of retargeting campaigns we plan for clients. The details change with every business, but the logic stays the same: match the ad to what the person did.

• Unfinished quote form. A homeowner starts a quote request for a kitchen renovation and leaves. For the next two weeks they see an ad showing a finished kitchen with a short line such as Pick up where you left off and a button to finish the quote.
• Viewed product, no purchase. A shopper looks at three pairs of boots in your online store. Dynamic remarketing shows those boots in a carousel on the sites and apps they use next.
• Service page visitor. A business owner reads your bookkeeping services page. A standard remarketing ad invites them to book a short call and explains what the first meeting covers.
• Video viewer. Someone watches most of your explainer video on YouTube. A follow-up ad shows a client story or a clear offer to take the next step.
• Past customer cross-sell. A customer who bought a furnace service plan sees an ad for air conditioning maintenance before summer.
• Event or webinar registrant. People who registered but did not attend see an ad offering the recording and a consultation.
• Seasonal reactivation. A travel or tax business shows past visitors a reminder as the next season approaches.
• Pricing page visitor. People who looked at pricing but did not act see an ad that answers the most common objection, such as financing, a free estimate.

Each example uses a different segment, a different message and a matching landing page. That separation is what turns remarketing from generic banner noise into a useful reminder. It is most valuable where customers take time to decide and each new customer is worth a meaningful amount: home services, professional and B2B services, ecommerce, real estate, education and training.

Why display advertising belongs in your marketing mix

Search ads capture people who are already looking for what you sell. Display and remarketing work alongside search by building familiarity before the search and following up after the click. Businesses that rely only on search pay for every visit once and then lose most of those visitors for good. Seeing your brand repeatedly across sites and apps keeps it familiar, so when the same person later searches for your service, they are more likely to recognize your name.

Visual storytelling

Display ads use images, logos, video and motion, so they can show your work, your products or your team in a way a text ad cannot. For businesses with visual results, such as renovation companies, cosmetic clinics, restaurants and real estate agents, this matters.

Precise and contextual targeting

Audiences can be narrowed by location, demographics, interests, in-market behaviour, website visits and customer lists. When the goal is to influence people who are weighing options, in-market segments and custom segments built from search terms and competitor websites are usually the best targeting choices. Contextual and placement targeting put ads on pages about topics related to your business, such as a mortgage broker’s ad on a home buying article.

Is retargeting still effective?

Yes, when it is done with care. Retargeting still reaches people who already know you, and those people are more likely to act than strangers. What has changed is the setup. Browsers limit some tracking, privacy laws expect clear consent, and people who decline tracking will not join your lists. That means lists are smaller than they were years ago, and first-party data, such as consented website visits, video viewers and customer lists, has become more valuable. Retargeting that relies on one generic banner shown endlessly performs poorly. Retargeting that uses clean tracking, sensible frequency, fresh creative and matched landing pages still earns its place in most budgets.

Is Google getting rid of display ads?

No. Google has not announced an end to display advertising. What has changed is how display is sold. Google now offers display inventory through several campaign types: standard Display campaigns, Demand Gen campaigns, which replaced Discovery campaigns, and Performance Max, which runs across all Google channels. Similar audiences were retired and replaced by lookalike and optimized targeting options. Plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome changed several times and did not remove remarketing based on your own site data. The practical lesson is that display is alive, but it relies more on first-party data, consent and automation than before. We keep up with these changes so your campaigns do not break when Google moves a setting.

What our display advertising agency handles

We handle every part of a display and remarketing program, from tracking setup to creative to monthly optimization. You approve the plan and the creative before anything goes live.

Tracking and audience setup

Remarketing depends on accurate data. We set up or audit your Google tag and Google Tag Manager, link Google Analytics 4 with Google Ads, and configure conversion tracking for calls, forms, bookings and purchases. We build audience segments based on the pages people visited and the actions they took, with membership durations that match your sales cycle.

Consent and privacy

Remarketing uses cookies and similar technologies, so your website needs a clear privacy policy and a consent notice. We configure consent mode so tags respect the choices visitors make, and we design campaigns that follow Google’s personalized advertising policies. More on that in the privacy section below.

Campaign strategy

We decide which audiences to reach, what each should see and how much to spend on each. A typical structure separates recent visitors, people who started but did not finish a form or purchase, past customers and prospecting audiences, so each can be measured and budgeted on its own.

Banner and ad creative

Our designers produce responsive display ad assets and fixed banner sets in the sizes Google recommends, including images, logos, headlines and descriptions. Each ad has one message and one call to action, sized to stay readable on a phone. We prepare variations so we can test messages and refresh creative before the audience tires of it.

Feeds for dynamic remarketing

For online stores we connect Google Merchant Center and check that product IDs in the feed match the IDs your tag sends. For service businesses we can build a business data feed so dynamic ads show the exact service, course or listing a visitor viewed. When feeds and tags fall out of step, dynamic ads stop serving quietly, so we monitor both.

Landing pages

An ad that brings someone back to a generic home page wastes the click. We match each ad to a landing page with the same offer and message, and improve those pages when the data shows people are leaving without acting. Our web design team builds new pages where the current site cannot support the offer.

Frequency and placement control

Seeing the same ad too often annoys people. We set frequency limits, exclude placements that produce accidental clicks or poor traffic, such as some mobile games, and review where ads appear so your brand is shown in suitable places.

Optimization and reporting

We review performance every week, adjust bids, budgets, audiences and creative, and report monthly in plain language: what was spent, what it produced and what we are changing next. Ad spend is paid directly to Google from your own account, and you keep full access to the account and its data.

Display campaign types we manage

Google offers several ways to run display and remarketing. We choose the campaign type based on your goal, your data and your budget, and we explain the trade-offs before we start.

Standard Display campaigns

Display campaigns give the most control over audiences, placements and creative. They suit remarketing programs and focused prospecting where we want to see exactly who is being reached and where. They support responsive display ads, which Google assembles from your assets, and uploaded image ads in fixed sizes.

Uploaded and HTML5 ads

Some brands want pixel-exact banners or animation. Uploaded image ads give full design control. Google limits uploaded HTML5 ads to eligible accounts, so we confirm eligibility before planning animated creative and use responsive ads or video where HTML5 is not available.

Demand Gen campaigns

Demand Gen campaigns show image and video ads on YouTube, including Shorts, Discover and Gmail. They work well for visual businesses and for reaching people in a browsing mood, and they support remarketing and lookalike segments built from your own data.

Performance Max

Performance Max runs one campaign across search, display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover and Maps, with Google’s automation deciding where to spend. It can perform well with good conversion data and strong creative, and it supports dynamic remarketing through a product feed. It also needs careful setup, brand exclusions and regular review to stay efficient. We use it where the data supports it and pair it with clear reporting so you can see what it is doing.

Automated bidding

Google’s automated bidding, often called Smart Bidding, sets a bid for each auction using signals such as device, location, time and audience membership that no person could adjust by hand. Its core benefit is that it optimizes toward the conversions or value you define. The catch is that it is only as good as your conversion tracking. If tracking counts the wrong actions, automation spends your budget chasing them. That is why tracking comes first in every project.

How a display and remarketing project runs

1. Audit and goals

We review your current Google Ads account, website tracking, audiences and results, and agree what a successful campaign looks like: the actions to count, the cost per lead or return you need, and the markets to reach.

2. Tracking, consent and audiences

We fix or install tracking, confirm conversions fire correctly, check the consent notice and consent handling, and build the audience segments. Remarketing lists need time to fill, so this happens first.

3. Creative and landing pages

Our designers produce the ad sets and our copywriters write headlines and descriptions. Landing pages are reviewed and improved where needed. You approve everything before launch.

4. Launch

Campaigns launch with conservative budgets, frequency limits and placement exclusions, and we monitor them closely in the first weeks.

5. Optimize

We shift budget toward the audiences, placements and ads that produce enquiries, pause what does not, and refresh creative on a schedule.

6. Report and plan

Monthly reports show spend, conversions, cost per conversion and what changed. Every quarter we review the strategy against your goals.

Remarketing, privacy and Google’s advertising policies

Remarketing uses information about what people did on your website, so it has to respect their privacy. Getting this right protects your visitors, your reputation and your Google Ads account.

Consent notice on your site

Canadian privacy law expects organizations to be open about how they collect and use personal information and to obtain meaningful consent. Visitors from Quebec are covered by that province’s privacy rules, which place extra weight on consent for tracking technologies. In practice, your site needs a plain-language privacy policy that mentions advertising cookies and remarketing, and a consent notice that lets people accept or decline. We set up the technical side so tags follow those choices. We are not lawyers, and your own legal adviser should confirm the wording of your policy.

Google’s personalized advertising policies

Google does not allow remarketing or other personalized ads based on sensitive information. Restricted categories include personal health, personal hardships such as debt or legal trouble, identity and belief, and sexual interests. Housing, employment and credit offers in Canada and the United States have their own restrictions on how audiences can be targeted. Ads also must not imply that Google knows something personal about the viewer, so a line such as Still thinking about your diagnosis is never acceptable.

Clinics, law firms and financial businesses

Businesses in these fields can still use display advertising. Campaigns rely on contextual targeting, placements and broad audiences rather than lists built from sensitive visits, and ad copy stays general. We design these campaigns within the rules from the start, which avoids disapproved ads and account warnings later.

What affects the cost of display and remarketing

There are two separate costs. Your ad spend is your own budget, paid directly to Google from your account. Our management fee covers strategy, setup, creative and ongoing optimization, and it is quoted in writing before we start. We do not publish a flat price for display management, because the work changes a lot from one account to the next. The main cost drivers are:

• Audience size. Smaller websites build smaller remarketing lists, which limits how much can usefully be spent on remarketing alone.
• Markets. The number of cities, provinces, states or countries targeted and whether ads run in one language or several.
• Campaign types. Display, Demand Gen, Performance Max and YouTube each need their own setup, creative and reporting.
• Creative volume. How many ad sets, sizes, videos and refreshes are needed each month.
• Feeds. Whether dynamic remarketing needs a product or business data feed built and maintained.
• Tracking work. Whether conversion tracking, GA4 and consent handling need to be built or repaired first.
• Landing pages. Whether current pages can carry the offer or new pages are needed.

Setup, monthly management and ad spend are always listed separately in your proposal. We recommend a starting ad budget based on your remarketing audience size and goals, and we tell you plainly if your traffic is too low for remarketing to be worth running yet. In that case, building traffic through SEO or search ads usually comes first. For reference, our SEO programs start from CAD 1,500 a month, and higher tiers are quoted by proposal.

Measuring display and remarketing properly

Display is easy to measure badly. Impressions and clicks are cheap, and a report full of large numbers can hide a campaign that produces nothing. We judge campaigns by business results, and we explain the difference between numbers that matter and numbers that only look good.

Conversions, not clicks

The primary measure is the number of calls, forms, bookings or purchases, and the cost of each one. Click-through rate is useful for comparing ads, but a campaign with a high click rate and no enquiries is not working.

View-through conversions

Google also reports view-through conversions: people who saw an ad without clicking and later converted. These show some of the influence display has, but they can overstate it, because some of those people would have converted anyway. We report them separately from click conversions so they are not mistaken for direct results.

Assisted conversions and the bigger picture

Remarketing often assists a conversion that is later credited to a search ad or an organic visit. We look at Google Analytics 4 attribution reports and at overall enquiry volume by month, so you can see whether the whole program is growing your business, beyond which campaign claims the credit.

Lead quality

For service businesses, a lead is only valuable if it becomes a client. Where you can share outcomes such as booked consultations or signed jobs, we use that feedback to steer campaigns toward the audiences that produce real customers. CS+, our CRM, can pass those outcomes back so bidding learns from real sales.

Common display and remarketing mistakes

Many accounts we review are losing money on display for reasons that are simple to fix:

• Display mixed into search campaigns. Older search campaigns sometimes have the Display Network option switched on, sending cheap, low-quality traffic through search budgets.
• No placement exclusions. Ads running in mobile games and apps where accidental taps produce clicks that never convert.
• One audience for everyone. Recent buyers, job applicants and first-time visitors all seeing the same ad.
• Stale creative. The same banner running for a year until nobody notices it.
• Unlimited frequency. People seeing an ad so often that it becomes irritating and harms the brand.
• Broken tracking. Conversions that are double counted, missing or counting page views, so automated bidding optimizes toward the wrong thing.
• Feeds out of step. Dynamic ads that stop serving because product IDs in the tag no longer match the feed.
• Ignoring policy and consent. Remarketing in restricted categories or without a consent notice, which can lead to disapproved ads, account problems and complaints.

A free review of your account will show which of these apply to you. We check campaign settings, tracking, audiences, placements, creative and landing pages, then send a short written summary of what we would keep, fix and stop, whether or not you decide to work with us.

Display ad creative that earns attention

People scroll past most banner ads without noticing them. The ads that work share a few traits, and our designers build every set around them.

• One idea per ad. A single message, such as a free estimate, a seasonal offer or a clear benefit, is read in the second or two the ad has.
• A visible brand. The logo and brand colours are clear, so even people who do not click remember who the ad was from.
• A clear action. A short button label such as Book a consultation or Get a quote tells people what happens next.
• Readable at small sizes. Many placements are small mobile banners, so text is short and large enough to read on a phone.
• Consistent with the landing page. The offer, image and wording match the page people arrive on, so they know they are in the right place.
• Fresh variations. New versions are prepared before performance drops, and results decide which messages stay.

For responsive display ads, Google combines the images, logos, headlines and descriptions you supply into many formats automatically. We supply a full set of high-quality assets in the recommended ratios, because the quality of those inputs has a direct effect on where and how often the ads can appear.

How display fits with search, video and media buying

Display and remarketing work best as part of a connected program. Our SEO team brings in organic visitors who can join your remarketing lists. Our Google Ads management team runs the search campaigns that capture demand, and remarketing follows up with the visitors who did not convert. Our web designers build the landing pages, and our designers and video team produce the creative. When a campaign needs reach beyond Google, such as streaming audio, connected TV or social platforms, our media buying team plans those placements alongside your display budget. Because one team sees all of it, we can tell you where each dollar is doing the most work and move budget between channels when the data says so.

Why businesses choose Canada Create™ for display advertising

Canada Create™ has managed digital advertising since 2008 and has served clients across Canada and the United States for more than 18 years. We are BBB Accredited with an A+ rating. Our sales and support line is open 24/7 at +1 (800) 808-9235, toll-free.

• Your account, your data. Your Google Ads account, audiences, feeds and data stay yours.
• Every result is reported in plain language.
• Ads and creative under one roof. Strategy, banners, video and landing pages are planned together.
• Your approval first. Nothing goes live without your review.
• Clear fees. Management is quoted in writing, and ad spend is paid to Google from your own account.
• Lead follow-up. CS+, our CRM, helps connect ad clicks to the clients they became.

Related guides: improving PPC advertising ROI and how much Google Ads costs.

Start your display and remarketing campaign

Ask for a free review of your current tracking, audiences and campaigns, or tell us about a new launch. Get a proposal in one business day with what we found, what we recommend and a written quote. Use the form on this page or call our toll-free line at +1 (800) 808-9235.