Remarketing Tag

## Why it matters

Not everyone buys on their first visit. Remarketing lets you show ads to people who viewed your site but didn't convert. The remarketing tag is how you tell Google Ads who to target: it marks a visitor as part of an audience, even if they didn't complete a purchase.

Without remarking, you're ignoring your warmest leads. With it, you can show a cheap sweater ad to someone who looked at sweaters, or remind someone who abandoned a cart halfway through checkout.

## How it works

A remarketing tag fires on page load, usually on every page or just on key pages like product pages or the homepage. It doesn't record a sale. It just says "this person visited". Google Ads records the visitor and adds them to an audience.

Later, when that person lands on a Google search result, YouTube video, or a publisher's display ad, Google Ads checks if they're in your remarketing audience. If they are, it shows them your ad instead of your competitor's.

## What does not matter

A remarketing hit is not a conversion. It doesn't prove someone bought anything. Don't confuse a remarketing tag with a conversion tag. A conversion tag fires once, when someone completes a purchase. A remarketing tag fires on every visit so the audience stays fresh.

Privacy regulations may restrict how you can build audiences, especially without explicit consent. Remarketing in Europe, for example, often requires consent under GDPR. Set up a consent banner and only fire the tag after consent is given. That's your job, not the tag's job.

## Code example

A Google Ads remarketing tag (aka a view-through conversion) on Google Ads account AW-123456789:

<!-- Remarketing tag for conversion id 123456789 -->
<img height="1" width="1" border="0" alt="" src="https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/viewthroughconversion/123456789/?value=0&currency_code=GBP&rdev=0&gacid=0&gtag_format=2&npa=0&frm=0" />
Copy

This fires a request to doubleclick.net/pagead/viewthroughconversion. It doesn't send a value or a transaction. It just marks the visitor.

Compare that to a conversion tag, which carries a value:

<!-- Conversion tag for a purchase -->
<img height="1" width="1" border="0" alt="" src="https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/conversion/123456789/?value=99.99&currency_code=GBP..." />
Copy

Same endpoint, same format, but this one has a value. Remarketing doesn't.

## How Scalpel Tags shows it

In the hit table, remarketing requests appear as rows with vendor Google Ads and a label like ViewThroughConversion. They're easy to spot because they don't carry a purchase value. Conversion tags, by contrast, show the value clearly.

The difference matters when you're debugging. A conversion tag fires once per purchase. A remarketing tag fires on every page. If you see fifty remarketing hits and one conversion hit on a single session, that's normal. If you see remarketing hits but no conversion on a purchase page, that's a bug.