How to Add Google Analytics 4 Audiences to Google Ads

Tired of showing the same generic ads to every single person who visits your website? Using Google Analytics 4 audiences in your Google Ads campaigns allows you to get incredibly specific with your remarketing, letting you target users based on the actual actions they take on your site. This article will show you exactly how to link your accounts, build powerful audiences in GA4, and use them to supercharge your Google Ads performance.

So, Why Bother With GA4 Audiences?

Connecting GA4 to Google Ads is more than just a technical step, it fundamentally changes how you can approach remarketing. Instead of running generic campaigns for "All Visitors," you can create highly segmented campaigns that speak directly to user behavior and intent. This leads to more relevant ads, better engagement, and a higher return on ad spend (ROAS).

Here’s what you gain:

Smarter Remarketing: Move beyond basic page views. You can create lists of users who watched a specific video, added an item to their cart but didn't buy, scrolled through 90% of a blog post, or visited a specific product category three times in a week. These behavior-based audiences are far more effective because they're based on intent.
Better Lookalike Audiences: In Google Ads, the quality of your seed list determines the quality of your similar (or "lookalike") audiences. Using a highly engaged or high-value audience from GA4 — like "all users who made a purchase" — creates a much stronger starting point for Google's algorithms to find new customers who resemble your best ones.
A Full-Funnel View: When your accounts are linked, you get a much clearer picture of the entire customer journey. You can analyze how your ads drive specific on-site behaviors and see which audiences are really driving conversions, not just clicks. This helps you make more informed decisions about your ad creative, budget, and overall strategy.

The Pre-Flight Checklist: What You Need First

Before you get started, make sure you have a few things in order. This will save you a lot of troubleshooting time later.

Proper Permissions: You'll need at least an Editor role in your Google Analytics 4 property and Admin access to your Google Ads account.
Same Google Account: The easiest way to do this is by using the same Google email address that has admin-level access to both GA4 and Google Ads.
Enable Google Signals: This is a must. Google Signals is a feature in GA4 that collects data from users who have turned on Ads Personalization in their Google accounts. You need to enable it to build remarketing lists for ads. You can find it in GA4 under Admin > Data Collection and Modification > Data Collection.

Step 1: Link Your GA4 and Google Ads Accounts

First things first, you need to tell Google Analytics and Google Ads that they should be talking to each other. This linking process is what allows audience and conversion data to flow between the two platforms.

Navigate to your GA4 account and click the Admin gear icon in the bottom-left corner.
In the Property column, scroll down to the "Product Links" section and click on Google Ads Links.
Here, you'll see any existing links. Click the blue Link button at the top right.
Click Choose Google Ads accounts. A new panel will appear showing the Google Ads accounts managed by your Google email address. Select the correct ad account and click Confirm.
Click Next. You’ll now be at the “Configure settings” step. This is the important part.
- Enable Personalized Advertising: Make sure this toggle is ON. This is the specific setting that allows your GA4 audiences to be used for remarketing in Google Ads.
- Enable Auto-Tagging: This should be enabled by default. Leave it on. It automatically adds the gclid parameter to your ad URLs, allowing both platforms to track campaign data more accurately.
Click Next, review your settings, and then click Submit.

That's it! The accounts are now linked. You can verify the link in your Google Ads account by going to Tools & Settings > Linked accounts, where you should see Google Analytics 4 in the list.

Step 2: Create Meaningful Audiences in GA4

With the platforms connected, you can now build your audiences. This is where you can get creative and strategic based on your business goals. Generic audiences get generic results, so think about which user behaviors are most valuable to you.

Head over to your GA4 Admin panel and, in the Property column, click on Audiences, then click the blue New audience button. Then you'll navigate to creating custom audiences. Here are a few practical examples to get you started:

Example 1: Classic Cart Abandoners

This is one of the most effective remarketing audiences for any e-commerce business. You're targeting users who showed strong purchase intent but didn't finish the job.

Conditions: Include users when event = begin_checkout. Then, add another group to exclude on a permanent basis for when event = purchase. This ensures you don't advertise to people who already bought something.
Membership Duration: Set this to something like 30 or 60 days. You want to reach them while the purchase is still fresh in their mind.

Example 2: Engaged Content Readers

If you run a blog or content-heavy site, this is a great way to target users who are truly interested in what you have to say. You can then run ads promoting a related product, webinar, or premium content piece.

Conditions: Include users when event = scroll and add a parameter where percent_scrolled > 90. This targets people who read almost an entire article.
Membership Duration: Something like 90 days works well here, as you're building a relationship with these readers over time.

Example 3: Your High-Intent Leads

For B2B or service-based businesses, a valuable conversion might be someone visiting your pricing or demo booking page but failing to convert.

Conditions: Include users when event = page_view and add a parameter where page_location contains /pricing. Then, temporarily exclude them when their event criteria is generate_lead or whatever you have named that event.
Membership Duration: Set this to around 30 days to catch leads when their interest is highest.

Once you’ve configured your audience, give it a clear, descriptive name (e.g., “30-Day Cart Abandoners [GA4]”) and click Save. After an audience is created, it will start collecting new users that meet its criteria — it is not retroactive.

Step 3: Find and Use Your Audiences in Google Ads

Alright, you’ve built your powerful new GA4 audiences. Where do they show up in Google Ads, and how do you use them?

Keep in mind there can be a 24-48 hour delay before a newly created GA4 audience appears in Google Ads.

Find Your GA4 Audiences

Log in to your Google Ads account.
Click on Tools & Settings in the top navigation bar.
Under "Shared Library," select Audience manager.
You'll now see a list of all your audience segments. Your new audiences from GA4 will have "Google Analytics 4" listed as their source.

Pro Tip: You might see a "Too small to serve" error for a particular network. For an audience to be usable in Search campaigns, it needs at least 1,000 active users in the past 30 days. For Display and YouTube, the minimum is 100 active users.

Add Your GA4 Audiences to a Campaign

Now, let's put these audiences to work.

Navigate to the campaign or ad group where you want to apply the audience.
From the left-hand menu, click on Audiences.
Click the pencil icon or the "Add an ad group/campaign" button to edit your targeting. Some versions of Google Ads might "Add Audience Segments".
A new window will open where you can select audiences. Click on Browse, then choose How they have interacted with your business and then Website visitors.
You will find your GA4 remarketing lists here. Select the ones you want, and click Save.

Targeting vs. Observation: What's the Difference?

When you add an audience, Google Ads will ask if you want to use it for "Targeting" or "Observation." This is a crucial distinction.

Targeting: This setting narrows your reach to exclusively show ads to people within your selected audience. This is exactly what you want for a classic remarketing campaign for "Cart Abandoners." You only want to show those ads to people who abandoned their cart.
Observation: This setting doesn't narrow your reach. Your ads continue to show based on your other targeting settings (like keywords). However, this mode allows you to gather data on how people in your selected audience perform. For instance, you could add your "Engaged Content Readers" audience to a Search campaign in Observation mode to see if they convert at a higher rate. If they do, you can add a positive bid adjustment to bid more for those valuable users.

Common Troubleshooting Tips

Running into issues? Here are a couple of quick fixes for common problems.

"My audiences are not showing up in Google Ads!"

First, be patient. It can take up to 48 hours to sync. If more time has passed, double-check that you enabled "Personalized Advertising" in your GA4 to Google Ads link settings.

"My audience size in GA4 is big, but it's 'too small to serve' in Google Ads."

This is usually due to platform minimums. Google Ads requires 1,000 users for Search and 100 for Display to protect user privacy. Also, remember that GA4 audiences are not retroactive — they only start building from the moment you create them. Give them time to grow if you have a lower-traffic site.

Final Thoughts

By connecting GA4 and Google Ads, you unlock much more granular, behavior-based remarketing that goes far beyond generic "all visitors" lists. Crafting audiences based on specific user actions — like abandoning a cart or engaging deeply with your content — allows you to deliver highly relevant ads that resonate with users and boost your overall campaign success.

Pulling data from Google Analytics and Google Ads is just the start. If you’re manually combining this information in spreadsheets to figure out what's working, the process can eat up hours. That’s precisely why we built Graphed. We connect to your GA4 and Google Ads accounts in seconds, letting you ask questions in simple English like, "show me my ROAS by campaign for my Engaged Readers audience" and instantly get a real-time dashboard. This lets you skip the report-building grind and spend your time on strategy that actually moves the needle.