What Is Retargeting? — Free Tool
Retargeting shows ads to people who already interacted with you: visited the site, watched a video, abandoned a cart. Learn why it converts better than cold traffic, why that comparison flatters it, and where frequency turns it counterproductive.
Showing ads to people who already interacted with you — visited the site, watched a video, abandoned a cart. Also called remarketing; it usually converts far better than cold traffic.
What it is
Retargeting is advertising aimed at people who have already interacted with you in some traceable way: visited the site, watched a chunk of a video, engaged with the profile, or put something in a cart and left. Also called remarketing. The audience is defined by something they did rather than by who the platform thinks they are, which is what makes it the most reliable targeting most advertisers have.
How it is measured
It runs on the same metrics as any paid work, with two that matter more than usual. Frequency, because this audience is small and a budget that would be invisible against a cold audience can show the same person the same ad a dozen times. And exclusions, because the single most common waste is continuing to advertise a product to somebody who already bought it. The audience is also built from a window: visitors from the last seven days behave differently from visitors from the last ninety.
Commonly misunderstood
Its conversion rate is read as its effectiveness, and they are not the same thing. Retargeting talks to people who were already interested, so some share of the sales it is credited with would have arrived without it. That does not make it a bad channel, it makes the comparison against cold traffic unfair, and it explains why an account that shifts budget into retargeting sees its reported numbers improve while revenue does not move. The second error is treating the audience as one audience, when the cart abandoner and the person who read one post need different messages.
When it matters
It matters most where there is a considered purchase and a gap between interest and buying, which is where the reminder does real work. It matters least, and irritates most, on a low-price impulse product where the person who did not buy in the first minute has decided.
Related terms
Features
- Plain definition, with the audiences it can be built from
- Why its conversion rate beats cold traffic and why that is partly an illusion
- Where frequency stops helping and starts annoying
- Why the cart abandoner and the blog reader should not get the same ad
- How it differs from a lookalike audience, which does the opposite job
Frequently asked questions
Why does retargeting convert so well?
Because the audience already knows you, and many of them were going to come back anyway. That second half is the part that gets left out: some of what retargeting reports as conversions is credit for sales that would have happened, which is why it looks unbeatable in a report.
Is retargeting the same as remarketing?
Yes, in ordinary use. The two words are used interchangeably for showing ads to people who already interacted with you, though some tools reserve remarketing for email specifically.
How often should someone see a retargeting ad?
Fewer times than most accounts show it. Frequency is the dial: enough to remind, not enough to follow somebody around. A frequency cap and an exclusion for people who already bought fix most of the damage.
Should everyone get the same ad?
No, and this is where most retargeting underperforms. Somebody who abandoned a full cart is a different problem from somebody who read one blog post, and sending both the same reminder wastes the strongest audience you have.
Do I need a lot of traffic?
You need enough for the audience to be worth serving ads to, and small sites often find the audience too small to run efficiently. When that is the case, the money usually does more work earning the first visit.
