How to test my Google Ads dynamic remarketing tag?
To know if the remarketing of your visitors works well, you have to test the working of the "remarketing tag" on your shop.
Step 1: Tag Assistant Companion setting up
First of all, you have to install the Google's "Tag Assistant Companion": in Google Chrome's browser (if you don't have Chrome, you can easily install it by clicking here), install the Google assistant tag by copying and pasting this link or by clicking here if you already are in a Chrome's browser.
Once you've installed Tag Assistant Companion, pin it to your browser for ease of use. To do this, click on the extensions icon in the top right-hand corner of your Chrome browser, then on the pin corresponding to the Tag Assistant Companion extension:
Step 2: Deactivating ad blockers
Deactivate any ad blockers that may be installed on your browser (such as "AdBlock" or others) for your store's domain. If you don't do this, the test may not work and you won't know if the tag is triggered correctly.
Step 3: Consent configuration
Configure consent management
Configure your consent management correctly. To do so, please follow this FAQ.Accept cookies
Whatever your cookie consent banner module, it's important to perform the following test by accepting all cookies on your cookie consent banner. This is because we'll be testing the technical implementation of your tag, so if the test works when all cookies are enabled, this means that everything is technically in place for tracking information to be sent to Google. Secondly, you can test the different types of consent. If you then find that your Google Ads account stops receiving data, or that there is an abnormal drop in the amount of data being sent, then the problem lies with your cookie banner module (see the end of this FAQ).
Step 4: Dynamic remarketing tag working test
To find out whether your Google Ads Dynamic Remarketing tag is indeed sending information about your visitors' activity to Google, you need to test its triggering on the pages of your site. Let's take the example of a product page. You don't need to test your tag on every page of your site: if your tag works for one, it'll work for all.
After accepting cookies on your consent banner, go to a product page in your store and click on the Tag Assistant Companion icon:
The Tag Assistant opens in a new tab. The URL of your product page should already be entered in the URL field. Click on "Connect" to have the assistant analyze your page and detect whether any information is being sent by your tag:
Wait for the connection to be established. Your product page, connected to Tag Assistant, will open in a new tab:
Return to the Tag Assistant tab, a "Connected" window should appear if the connection was successful, click on "Continue":
If your tag is detected by the Assistant, you should see its Google Ads conversion ID displayed:
In the left-hand menu, click on "History Change" and then on "Data Layer". If the tag has been successfully triggered, you should see the "page_view" event in the "API Call" section and the product information displayed in the "Data Layer":
Here's how to interpret the data in our example:
- event : "page_view" -> the event is a view of a page
- send_to : "AW-123456789" -> corresponds to the conversion ID of the Google Ads Dynamic Remarketing tag detected
- ecomm_prodid = "BMEN29v62" -> matches the product ID in your Google Merchant Center feed: shop prefix: BM, language prefix: EN, product id: 29 and combination: 62
- ecomm_pagetype = "product" -> the page viewed is a product page
- ecomm_totalvalue = "299.99" -> the product price value is 299,99
- ecomm_category = "Women" -> the product category is "Women"
- isSaleItem = "false" -> the product is not in promotion
- If you can see the product information in the Data Layer, this means that your dynamic remarketing tag is working properly, and that technically everything is in place for your visitors' activity to be tracked in your Google Ads account. If you subsequently observe no data in your Google Ads account, or a significant loss of data, start by checking that the configuration of your dynamic remarketing campaigns in your Google Ads account has been set up correctly. If this doesn't solve the problem, please refer to this FAQ.
- If you don't see any data in the Data Layer, this means that the Google Ads tag has been blocked. Please refer to this FAQ for possible causes and solutions. Once you've solved the problem(s), repeat the test as described above.