THIS WEEKS POST
Hi,
Last week, I was working on one of the accounts and noticed that Google Ads audiences were not populated. Took a while to find the cause.
I figured more people might have the same problem. Either the audience is not populating, or it is too small, and ads are not showing. So, I have collected all the reasons below.
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Are your accounts linked?
I know it's like asking if your computer is turned on. But we need to remove the obvious stuff out of the way. But there might be something wrong with your connection. Go to GA4 then to Admin > Google Ads links. If you see a link to your account, great.
If you don't, then you need to connect accounts.
Either way, you now know that it's not the account linking that causes your problems.
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Personalized advertising is not enabled
If your account is linked, check if personalized advertising is enabled. This could be disabled by accident. When you go to Google Ads links, it should be visible immediately.
If it's not, click on your link and then click to enable.
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The audience is too small
Google has a minimum audience size for different campaign types. So, your audience might just be too narrow.
- Display campaigns - 100 active users
- Search remarketing - 1000 active users
- Shopping campaigns - 100 active users
- YouTube campaigns - 1000 active users
- Demand Gen - 1000 active users.
If you created an audience with many filters in GA4, check if it's not too narrow. If you still want to use that audience, you will have to wait a while until it reaches the needed size.
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Give it more time
Accumulating an audience takes time. After creating a new audience, GA4 might take 24-48 hours.
If you just linked your GA4 and Google Ads accounts, audiences might not appear in your Google Ads account for 72 hours.
However, if you did this like a week ago, and still nothing happens, then your problem is not here and let's move on.
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Data sharing with Google Ads is disabled in GA4
Head to GA4 and check how your data is managed and that all Google services can use it.
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Google Signals are disabled
While you're still in your GA4 account, check if your Google Signals are enabled. Go to Data collection and modification > Data collection.
If it is enabled, scroll down to see if all regions are enabled as well. Sometimes, or rather, someone might have disabled it for some locations, giving you a hard time.
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User-provided data collection is turned on
Right where you enabled signals (data collection), you will find user-provided data collection. Make sure it's turned on.
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Data collection acknowledged
While staying in Data collection (as above), check if user data collection is acknowledged.
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Have you implemented Cookie Consent?
This year, Google introduced Consent mode V2, and all remarketing campaigns require it. There are several types of consent being sent:
- analytics_storage
- ad_storage
- ad_user_data
- ad_personalization
- functionality_storage
- personalization_storage
- security_storage
But in our case, you need two: ad_storage and ad_personalization. If those are not granted, the data will not be sent to Google Ads.
This is also the reason why you might see higher audience numbers in your GA4 than in Google Ads. Users might consent to analytics_storage, but not to others. GA4 will receive the data, but it won't be passed on to Google Ads.
If you have Google Tag Manager, enable preview mode and visit your website. Then, select consent even and check the state of each consent.
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Your events are marked with NPA
NPA stands for non-personalized advertising, and when creating events or user properties in GA4, you can mark them as such. You can spot these events easily:
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If your audience contains one of these events, your audience will not populate. You can either create a new audience without that event, or remove NPA from that event.
You can click on the 3 dots and remove the NPA. However, you have to make sure that whoever marked it as NPA knows it. Maybe there is a good reason why this event is marked as NPA.
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βWhy Google Ads audiences not populating?β
