The number of users in a Google Analytics audience may differ from the number of users in the same audience when exported to Google Ads and other Google products. While Google Analytics reports the total number of users who meet your defined audience criteria, Google Ads reports only the subset of those users who are eligible for remarketing. This article explains reasons why there may be differences in audience list sizes across products.
Google Ads does not maintain a single universal list size. Instead, it tracks distinct sizes for Search, YouTube, Gmail, and Display & Video 360. These sizes reflect the specific availability of users for remarketing on those channels.
On this page
- Network-specific activity requirements
- End-user consent and ads personalization preferences
- Identity spaces and data freshness
- Where there may be differences
Network-specific activity requirements
Google Ads list sizes reflect users who are eligible to be served an ad on a specific network, subject to that network’s active usage requirements. For example, a user will only populate in a Search remarketing list if they have actively visited Google Search within the preceding 30 days, regardless of when they met the criteria for the Google Analytics audience. Learn more about Set up your data segments for Search ads campaign.
End-user consent and ads personalization preferences
In Google Analytics, the size of an audience represents the number of users who meet the audience criteria. In Google Ads and other advertising products, the size of a Google Analytics audience reflects only the remarketable portion of this group. If a user opts out of ads personalization (for example: Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt, or device-level settings), they may still be included in Google Analytics measurement reporting. However, the user will be excluded from audience lists exported to Google Ads.
Both Google Analytics users and end users can apply ads personalization preferences in multiple ways. These ads personalization preferences impact how users are counted in Google advertising products like Google Ads, but not in Google Analytics.
Google Analytics settings
Ads personalization for a linked Google Ads account
In addition to the property-level ads personalization settings, you can turn on or turn off Ads personalization in Analytics for a particular linked Google Ads account. For audiences to be sent to Google Ads, Ads personalization must be enabled on the link between a Google Analytics property and a Google Ads link. It is enabled by default when you link a Google Ads account to Analytics. Learn more about controlling ads personalization for a single Google Ads link.
After you establish a connection with an advertising platform, such as Google Ads and activate ad personalization, we generate the audience list incorporating data from the previous 30 days. If the integration with an ad platform and the activation of ad personalization occur more than 30 days after you create the audience, the audience list data in Google Analytics won't align with the audience list data in Google Ads.
Granular location and device data
Collecting granular location and device data can also affect the data exported to other Google products. If you have this setting disabled, Google Analytics will not collect several dimensions (City, Device brand, and others). Any audiences built using these dimensions will be inaccurate.
Personalization Consent
Property settings
You can enable or disable personalized advertising at the property level using the data controls in Google Analytics. Google Analytics users can also do this for specific events, and user-properties. The advanced setting allows for ads personalization to be enabled or disabled regionally, for users coming from any or all supported countries and/or US states.
Tag configuration settings
Similarly, property administrators can opt out of allowing the use of Analytics data for ads personalization entirely or partially, through Google Analytics tagging implementation adjustments. This can be done on Web Tags and SDK Configuration.
Google Account configuration settings
Users logged into their Google Account can configure their ads personalization preferences at their Google account level in My Ad Center, which then applies when they navigate websites/apps logged with their Google Accounts.
Operating system-level configuration settings
Some operating systems, like Android 4.4 and older, allow an end user operating system-level configuration for ads personalization, limiting personalized advertising data collection. Learn more about advertising identifiers for mobile apps.
Consent mode
If you implement a consent banner asking for permission to store ads or analytics data, users who visit your site or app can choose to opt out. If users choose to opt out of ads data storage, they are ineligible for remarketing campaigns. Nevertheless, if they've agreed to analytics storage, they may still appear in your Google Analytics reports, but they won't be included in the count for any linked advertising services.
ATT consent
With Apple's iOS 14 update and its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, many advertisers have chosen to implement the ATT prompt to ask for permission to use certain information for advertising purposes in a compliant manner. If a user denies the ATT consent prompt, device identifiers required for remarketing are not collected, and the user is not eligible for remarketing purposes. As a result, the user may appear in Google Analytics reports, but they won't be included in the user count for linked advertising services. This also further reduces the exported list size compared to analytics totals.
Identity spaces and data freshness
Identify spaces
Google analytics uses client IDs for websites and app-instance IDs for applications for reporting. However, Google Ads requires advertising cookies or specific identifiers to match users during serving time, which may not always be available for every Google Analytics user.
Backfilled audiences
When you create an Audience in Google Analytics and enable Google Ads remarketing, Google Analytics backfills that audience in Google Ads with recently added members. However, Google Analytics reports and audience lists do not contain backfilled audience memberships. A user will need to log any event (become active) after the audience is created for reports and audience lists to show the user in that audience in Google Analytics reporting.
After you establish a connection with an advertising platform, such as Google Ads and activate ad personalization, we generate the audience list incorporating data from the previous 30 days. If the integration with an ad platform and the activation of ad personalization occur more than 30 days after you create the audience, the audience list data in Google Analytics won't align with the audience list data in Google Ads.
Data freshness
The time it takes Analytics and Google Ads to collect and process events and update audiences is called data freshness. Freshness time may differ between Analytics and other Google products. In the time between when the audiences are updated for one product, but not updated for the other product, there may be some data differences. Learn more about Data freshness.
Data import
For user data imported via User Data Import, only active users are included in the audience list sizes reporting in Google Analytics, such as the Audiences Report and is also included in export destinations like Google Ads.
Where there may be differences
Reporting surfaces
Your audiences management tables within Google Analytics populate lists starting from their creation data. Reporting explorations reflect data from the full lifetime of the property. This structural difference in evaluation timeframes directly causes a divergence in the reported numbers between these surfaces.
Builder estimates
The summary integrated into the Google Analytics audience builder provides a data estimate calculated based on the 30 days. Because of this specific lookback window, it is frequently a completely different metric than the process user count exported to an active Google Ads remarketing list.
User count reporting across surfaces
The following example illustrates the user count differences you may see across surfaces. If you created a property in January of 2019, but you created a user list of "All Users in Japan" in January of 2020:
- Export to Google Ads: The audience list exported to Google Ads would only include users from January 2020 moving forward, plus 30 days of backfilled users.
- Audience pre-population, as the full list of users meeting the audience criteria in the 30 days before the audience was created, is relevant only for integrations like Google Ads where the full list of users is sent. This discrepancy only occurs if the membership duration is over 30 days.
- Analytics reporting for user metrics in explorations and reports: If you created a property in January of 2019, and you looked at All Users in Japan since January 2019, it would show all users for the lifetime of the property. User count reporting in Analytics reflects the users for the lifetime of the property collecting data.
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If your property is linked to Google Ads, you will also see list size estimates for the audience once exported to Google Ads.
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