A good remarketing audience duration is usually 7 to 90 days, and the “right” number depends on how long your customers take to decide and how much traffic you have to work with.
Remarketing audience duration (sometimes called membership or retention window) is simply how long someone stays eligible to see your ads after they visit your site or take an action. Short windows stay highly relevant but can be small. Longer windows build volume but often drop conversion rate because people cool off.
Practical durations that work for most local businesses
| Audience type | Typical duration | Best for | Example in Orlando |
|---|---|---|---|
| High-intent visitors | 7 to 14 days | People who were close to booking | “Contact” page, “Schedule” page, pricing page visitors for dentists, HVAC, pest control |
| General site visitors | 30 days | Steady reminder without getting stale | Most service businesses with a 1 to 4 week decision cycle |
| Consideration visitors | 60 to 90 days | Higher-ticket or comparison shopping | Law firms, cosmetic dentistry, remodelers, real estate services |
| Long-cycle prospects | 120 to 180 days | Big purchases and slower decision timelines | Estate planning, high-end elective procedures, long lead-time home projects |
| Past customers and CRM lists | 90 to 540 days | Repeat business, reactivation, upsells | Dental hygiene reminders, annual inspections, seasonal services |
If you want a simple starting point, run 3 audiences: (1) 7 to 14 days for your highest-intent pages, (2) 30 days for all visitors, and (3) 90 days for “research” visitors. Then watch cost per lead and lead quality for each group, and shift budget toward the windows that bring real appointments, not just clicks. If you want help building and tuning these segments inside Google Ads, our PPC management work includes audience setup, exclusions, and conversion tracking so the campaign can learn from actual booked leads.
Platform limits you should know before you pick a number
Most platforms let you choose your duration, but they do have caps. In Google Ads, many remarketing and data segments can go up to 540 days, and Customer Match also has a maximum membership duration of 540 days. Meta website custom audiences commonly allow up to 180 days. Microsoft Advertising remarketing lists commonly cap at 180 days, and impression-based remarketing can be shorter depending on the setup. If you set a duration longer than your sales cycle just because you can, you usually pay for extra impressions to people who are no longer shopping.
How to choose the right window for your business
- Match your sales cycle: If most people call the same day, keep it short (7 to 14 days). If they compare options for weeks, use 30 to 90 days.
- Match intent: Short windows for bottom-of-funnel pages, longer windows for blog or educational visitors. If you need a quick refresher, our FAQ on search intent and its main types maps nicely to remarketing tiers.
- Don’t force volume: If your audience is too small at 7 days, move to 14 or 30 days, or widen the audience by including more pages, not by jumping straight to 180.
- Use exclusions: Exclude people who already converted (and route them into a separate past-customer audience) so you do not pay to chase the same lead again.
Florida and sensitive-industry note
If you market healthcare or anything that can reveal sensitive personal info, be careful with remarketing rules and ad policies. Build audiences from general site behavior (like visiting a service page) rather than anything that implies a medical condition, and avoid uploading patient lists unless your legal and consent process is solid. When in doubt, keep your remarketing creative general, focus on the service area, and push the user back to a neutral landing page.
One last practical tip, remarketing works best when your landing pages answer the questions people are stuck on. If your site is slow or confusing on mobile, the audience duration will not fix that. Our web design team often improves remarketing ROI by tightening the page flow, speeding up load times, and making calls and forms easier to complete.
