Your audience definition is extraordinarily complex.
Your audience definition includes excluded events or user properties from ads personalisation.
Audiences imported from GA4 to Google Ads usually appear much smaller.
Google Ads remarketing is not correctly enabled in GA4.
Ensure that your web pages are setting the remarketing cookie.
The ‘Continous Audience Sharing’ option is not enabled.
Google Consent Mode can impact how GA4 audiences populate in Google Ads.
Google Services are not allowed to receive consented data.
#1 Not enough time has elapsed.
Following is a summary of the key points related to audience availability in Google Ads after creating a new audience in GA4:
Factor
Details
Initial Waiting Period
After creating a new audience in GA4, it typically takes 24-48 hours for the audience to start accumulating new users.
User Inclusion
It can take 1-2 days for a new user who meets the audience criteria to be included in the audience.
Google Ads Population
After linking GA4 with Google Ads, it can take up to 72 hours for the GA4 audiences to appear in Google Ads.
Pre-population
When linking GA4 to Google Ads, audience lists are prepopulated with up to 30 days of data, if available.
Continuous Updates
Audiences are continuously updated as new data is collected, and users’ memberships are reevaluated.
Minimum Size Requirements
The audience must meet minimum size thresholds (e.g., 100 active users for Display Network campaigns).
Data Collection Timing
Only data collected after linking GA4 with Google Ads will be imported; historical data is excluded.
Full Audience Availability
While the initial data transfer happens within 24-72 hours, it can take several days to a week for audiences to fully populate and become usable in the Google Ads campaign.
The minimum audience size requirements vary based on the type of campaign.
When an audience falls below the minimum size requirements for Google Ads remarketing campaigns, it becomes ineligible for use in those campaigns.
To maintain the minimum size requirement, you can:
#1 Modify the audience criteria to include more users by broadening conditions or time frames, thus increasing the audience size to meet the minimum thresholds.
#2 Wait until the audience accumulates enough active users.
#3 Merge smaller audiences to create a larger audience that meets the required minimum size for the campaign type.
Check the size of your audience in GA4 by following the steps below:
#3 Check the audience size by looking at the ‘Total users’ column:
If a GA4 audience size is less than 100 active users within the last 30 days, it is unlikely to be available for use in Google Ads campaigns.
Check the ‘Advertising Segments’ report in GA4.
Check the ‘Advertising Segments’ report in GA4 to see the size of the imported GA4 audience that can be targeted via Google Ads campaigns.
The advertising segments are the GA4 audiences that are imported to Google Advertising products like ‘Google Ads’.
To check the size of advertising segments, navigate to ‘Advertising’ > ‘Tools’ > ‘Advertising Segments’
Look at the following highlighted columns to determine the size of advertising segments:
The list sizes show how many users are available for ads personalization in the last 30 days.
Note: The sizes of advertising segments may differ from the number of users in GA4 audiences.
Increase the size of your GA4 audience via user data import.
Using user data import in GA4 can help increase the size of your GA4 audiences, which in turn can improve the chances of these audiences populating in Google Ads.
In GA4, you can import user data from external sources like CRM systems or other databases.
The imported data can include additional user attributes or properties that aren’t collected through GA4 tracking.
This data immediately becomes available as criteria for audience qualification.
Users can be added to an existing GA4 audience based solely on the imported data without any further interaction with your website or app.
This allows you to enrich your existing GA4 audience with external data points.
By incorporating more data and user attributes, you can potentially increase the number of users who qualify for your audiences, helping to meet the minimum size requirements for exporting to Google Ads.
Importing more relevant data points improves the quality and relevance of your audiences, enabling better targeting and potentially enhancing the performance of your Google Ads campaigns.
#3 Your audience definition is narrow or incorrect.
If the size of your GA4 audience is less than 100 active users or if your audience is not recording any users, you may need to review the audience definition in GA4 or recreate a new audience.
The audience criteria may be too narrow or specific, resulting in very few users meeting the conditions.
You may need to broaden the audience definition by adjusting the parameters or conditions to address this issue.
If reviewing and adjusting the audience definition does not solve the issue, you may need to recreate a new audience. This can sometimes resolve issues with the audience population.
To review an audience definition in GA4, follow the steps below:
#1 Navigate to the admin section of your GA4 property.
#2 Navigate to ‘Data Display’ > ‘Audiences’
#3 Click on the three dots menu next to the audience name you want to review and then click on ‘Edit’:
#4 Examine the conditions set for the audience. Look at the summary section. Check if the criteria are too narrow or specific. Broaden the criteria if needed by extending membership duration, including more events, etc.
#5 After making adjustments, click “Save” to update the audience definition.
#6 After saving changes, wait for 24-48 hours to see if the audience size increases. Check if the audience now meets the minimum requirement of 100 active users in the last 30 days.
If the audience still does not populate or reach the minimum size after these steps, you may need to consider creating a new audience or investigating other potential issues.
#4 Your audience definition is extraordinarily complex.
Google recommends not creating extraordinarily complex audiences in GA4 as it can lead to storage limit issues, which can prevent the creation of new audiences.
Each GA4 property has an unspecified storage limit for audience definitions. Exceeding this limit can cause audience creation failures.
Characteristics of complex audiences.
Audiences with three or more conditions are generally more complex.
Audiences using custom dimensions or metrics might be considered more complex than those using only standard dimensions and metrics.
Audiences that mix different types of conditions (e.g., demographic, behavioural, and custom data) could be seen as more complex.
Audiences utilising features like predictive metrics or complex sequences might be considered more complex.
Examples of complex audiences.
>> Users who have visited the site more than three times in the last seven days, spent over 5 minutes per session, and viewed at least 2 product pages.
>> Users who have a custom loyalty score above 80, have logged in more than five times, and have referred at least one new customer.
>> Customers who have purchased a specific product category fall into a high-value customer segment (based on lifetime value) and have engaged with your mobile app in the last 14 days.
#5 Your audience definition includes excluded events or user properties from ads personalisation.
When your GA4 audience definition includes events or user properties that have been excluded from ads personalisation, it can reduce the size of the imported audience in Google Ads.
If you exclude events or user-scoped custom dimensions from ads personalization, any audience built using that data will not be eligible for export to Google’s advertising products, such as Google Ads.
This can limit your ability to use those audiences for remarketing and other targeted advertising efforts.
To check and manage excluded events in a GA4 property:
a. Navigate to Admin > Data display > Events.
b. Look for events marked as NPA (Non-Personalized Ads).
c. To reinclude an event, click on ‘Unmark as NPA’ after clicking on the three dots menu next to the event:
To check and manage excluded user-scoped custom dimensions in a GA4 property:
a. Navigate to Admin > Data display > Custom definitions.
b. Look for user-scoped custom dimensions marked as NPA:
c. To reinclude a dimension, click on the three dots next to it and select “Unmark as NPA“.
#6 Audiences imported from GA4 to Google Ads usually appear much smaller.
1) When you import an audience from GA4 to Google Ads, the actual audience in Google Ads may be smaller due to differing match rates.
Google Ads has specific requirements for audience sizes when it comes to targeting, which may not always match the GA4 requirements for audience sizes.
Google Ads matches users based on data like Google accounts, cookies, and device IDs.
GA4 audience size could be based on sampled or estimated data rather than exact counts.
Since GA4 can collect data from various sources, including non-Google platforms, the audience it identifies is often more extensive and diverse.
Suppose GA4 identified users from Facebook who cannot be matched in Google’s ecosystem (due to lack of identifiable information or cross-platform privacy restrictions).
In that case, they won’t be included in your Google Ads audience.
2) Privacy regulations and individual user settings may limit the ability to track and match users across platforms.
Users who opt out of tracking or whose data cannot be shared won’t appear in your cross-platform audiences.
Similarly, users who don’t consent to tracking for personalised ads won’t be included in the Google Ads audience,
With increasing restrictions on third-party cookies and users frequently switching between devices, discrepancies between the audience sizes of the two platforms will only increase.
3) If you have only recently set up or modified the audience in GA4, remember there is usually a data processing delay (24 to 72 hrs) between GA4 and Google Ads.
Both GA4 and Google Ads have their own data processing pipelines.
When you make changes to your audience in GA4 or modify any configurations, these changes need to be processed internally before they can be reflected in Google Ads.
The processing involves data validation, aggregation, and synchronization across Google’s servers, which can take time.
When audiences are imported from GA4 to Google Ads, they undergo privacy checks to ensure they comply with Google’s advertising policies and privacy regulations.
This step can add to the delay, as it involves analysing the audience data to ensure it meets the necessary criteria for use in advertising campaigns.
So, in reality, you will need a GA4 audience much larger than 100 active users for it to be effectively usable in Google Ads.
#7 Google Ads remarketing is not correctly enabled in GA4.
Google Ads remarketing not being correctly enabled in GA4 can be a reason why GA4 audiences are not populating in Google Ads.
To ensure Google Ads remarketing is correctly enabled in GA4, you need to check several things:
#7.1 Make sure that ‘Google Signals data collection’ is enabled in your GA4 property:
Without Google Signals enabled, GA4’s ability to pass audience data to Google Ads for remarketing purposes is severely limited.
Disabling Google Signals can result in GA4 audiences showing as empty (zero users) in Google Ads, even if the audience has thousands of users in GA4.
This occurs because Google Ads relies on Google Signals data to populate the remarketing audience lists.
A notable discrepancy between audience sizes in GA4 and Google Ads becomes more pronounced when Google Signals is disabled.
The remarketing capabilities and targeting effectiveness in Google Ads will be significantly diminished when Google Signals is disabled.
Without cross-device tracking, demographic data, and enhanced audience features, the audience lists in Google Ads won’t capture the full range of users, thus reducing the reach and effectiveness of campaigns.
#7.2 Make sure that Google Signals data collection is enabled, at least in the region where you advertise.
Users from regions where Google Signals is disabled won’t be eligible for remarketing in Google Ads.
This means that even if these users are counted in your GA4 audience, they won’t appear in the corresponding Google Ads audience.
Ideally, you should enable Google Signals data collection for all regions to maximise audience size.
#7.3 Make sure that ‘User-provided data collection’ is turned on.
User-provided data collection is primarily used for Enhanced Conversions in Google Ads, which improves the accuracy of conversion tracking by using first-party data provided by users, such as emails or phone numbers.
While it doesn’t directly increase audience size in GA4 or Google Ads, enabling it can lead to better customer insights and more accurate conversion attribution, which indirectly contributes to improved audience targeting.
#7.4 Make sure that ‘Granular location and device data collection’ is enabled.
Enabling this feature allows GA4 to collect more detailed data about users’ locations and devices.
This can lead to larger and more diverse audience segments in GA4 and Google Ads, as you have access to more granular data for segmentation.
You can create more specific audiences based on city-level location data and detailed device information.
#7.5 Make sure that ‘Granular location and device data collection’ is enabled at least in the region where you advertise.
Ideally, you should enable ‘Granular location and device data collection’ for all regions to maximise audience size.
#7.6 Ensure you haven’t excluded geographic regions from ads personalisation.
Ensuring that you haven’t excluded geographic regions from ads personalisation is crucial for maximising your audience size and remarketing capabilities.
If ads personalisation is turned off for a region, users from that region won’t be added to your remarketing lists in platforms like Google Ads, even if they qualify based on GA4 audience criteria.
This can significantly reduce the size of your remarketing audiences.
#7.7 Check if the user data collection acknowledgement has been enabled.
#7.8 Verify that your GA4 property is correctly linked to your Google Ads account.
One of the important parts of enabling Google Ads remarketing in GA4 is to make sure that your GA4 property is correctly linked to your Google Ads account.
#1 Navigate to the admin area of your GA4 property.
#4 Check whether the correct Google Ads account is linked to your GA4 property by matching the Account ID displayed in your GA4 property with the account ID displayed in your target Google Ads account.
#5 Ensure that ‘Personalized Advertising’ is enabled for your linked Google Ads account:
Note(1): When you unlink GA4 and Google Ads, ad groups targeting remarketing lists based on GA4 audiences will stop running.
Note(2): Once an audience is created in GA4 and exported to Google Ads, the underlying definition cannot be modified from within Google Ads. Changes must be made in GA4.
Note(3): Dynamic remarketing for website visitors is not available in GA4 properties.
#8 Ensure that your web pages are setting the remarketing cookie.
Ensuring that your webpages are setting the remarketing cookie when using Google Marketing Platform ad products is an important step in troubleshooting why GA4 audiences may not be populating in Google Ads.
The remarketing cookie (such as the DoubleClick cookie) is essential for comprehensive user data collection in GA4.
If it’s not set, data collection may be incomplete, resulting in missing users in your audiences.
The remarketing cookie also helps track users across sessions and devices; without it, GA4 can’t build accurate user profiles, reducing the overall audience size.
Users without the remarketing cookie may be ineligible for inclusion in remarketing audiences.
If the cookie isn’t set for enough users, audiences may not meet the minimum size requirement for use in Google Ads.
Verifying the cookie’s presence can help narrow down issues with audience population in Google Ads.
Follow the steps below to ensure your web pages set the remarketing cookie.
#1 Navigate to the webpage you want to check for the remarketing cookie in the Google Chrome web browser.
#2 Right-click on the page and select ‘Inspect’ from the drop-down menu to open the developer console.
#3 Click on the ‘Network’ tab.
#4 Select the option ‘Preserve log’ to capture all network activity.
#5 Refresh the webpage.
#6 Search for network calls to: https://stats.g.doubleclick.net/g/collect
#7 Check if at least one of the following cookies is present in the request header: NID, SNID, ANID, ID, IDE, or DSID (depending on the setup).
If these network calls and cookies are present, your remarketing setup should function correctly, and your GA4 audiences should populate as expected in Google Ads.
#9 The ‘Continous Audience Sharing’ option is not enabled.
Google recommends checking the audience manager settings for your Google Ads manager account to ensure that GA4 audiences are correctly populated in Google Ads.
Setting the manager account as an audience manager for all sub-accounts ensures that audiences created in GA4 and linked to the manager account are shared with all sub-accounts.
This setting enables continuous audience sharing, which means that existing and new remarketing lists created from sub-accounts are automatically shared with the manager account.
Follow the steps below to enable the ‘Continous Audience Sharing’ option:
#1 Login to to your Google Ads Manager account.
#2 Navigate to Admin > Manager Account Settings:
#3 Click on the ‘Continous Audience Sharing’ drop-down menu:
#4 Click on the following two checkboxes and then click on the ‘Save’ button:
Add this manager as an audience manager for all sub-accounts.
Access and share all audience segments from specific sub-accounts.
Do not turn on the ‘Continuos audience sharing’ option if you are a marketing agency which manages multiple clients.
For agencies managing multiple clients, turning on continuous audience sharing could lead to unintended data sharing between different clients’ accounts.
This option is suitable only for organisations that operate multiple Google Ads accounts for their own business.
#10 Google Consent Mode can impact how GA4 audiences populate in Google Ads.
If a significant number of users do not provide consent for analytics storage, ad storage and/or ad personalisation, it can lead to smaller, less accurate, or even non-existent GA4 audiences in Google Ads due to the limited data collection and sharing capabilities.
Without consent for analytics storage, GA4 cannot collect and store user data, reducing the overall pool of users for audience creation.
This directly impacts the size of audiences that can be created and shared with Google Ads.
Lack of consent for ad storage and/or ad personalisation limits the ability to create targeted audiences based on user behaviour and preferences.
This affects the accuracy and effectiveness of remarketing audiences in Google Ads.
While GA4 uses modelling to fill in data gaps, this modelled data is unlikely to be as accurate or comprehensive as actual user data for creating audiences.
If you have a significant GA4 audience size but your Google Ads audiences show zero size, there is always a possibility that your Google consent mode is not implemented correctly.
Google Ads requires specific consent for ‘ad_storage’ and ‘ad_personalization’ to create and populate audiences.
If these consent types are always sent as ‘denied’, Google Ads won’t be able to use the GA4 user data for audience building.
#11 Google Services are not allowed to receive consented data.
Some users may disable the setting in their GA4 property that allows Google Services to receive consented data from the GA4 property.
When Google Services are not allowed to receive consented data from GA4 property it can reduce the size of GA4 audiences in Google Ads.
Make sure all Google Services are allowed to receive consented data:
You can navigate to this screen by following the steps below:
#1 Navigate to the admin section of your GA4 property.
#2 Click on ‘Data Streams’ under ‘Data collection and modification’.
#3 Click on your web data stream.
#4 Click on the ‘Consent Settings’ drop-down menu:
#5 Click on ‘Manage data use across Google services’:
#6 Click on ‘Select Google Services’:
#7 Make sure all checkboxes are selected and then click on the ‘Save’ button:
Note: At least keep the ‘Ad services’ option enabled if you want to use GA4 data for audience building in Google Ads. However, the better option is to enable all Google Services as it provides more comprehensive data sharing across Google’s ecosystem, potentially improving the effectiveness of your advertising efforts.
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