What is retargeting in digital marketing?
Quick answer
Retargeting is advertising aimed at people who have already interacted with a business, usually by visiting its website, so its ads follow them as they browse other sites and social media. It brings back people who showed interest but did not buy.
Last updated
Updated · By Robert Breen
Why it matters
Most visitors leave without doing anything: on many sites, 95% or more of first visits end without a purchase or sign-up. Retargeting is a relatively cheap way to remind those people, who already know the business, to come back.
Because the audience is warm, retargeting usually converts far better than ads to strangers. It is the bottom-of-the-funnel complement to awareness campaigns, which supply the visitors it later reminds.
A worked example
A B2B software company has 8,000 visitors a month to its pricing page, and 2% start a free trial. It adds the Google and Meta tracking tags and creates an audience of pricing-page visitors from the last 30 days who did not start a trial. It shows them a short customer-story video and a "Book a 15-minute demo" ad.
In the first month the retargeting campaign spends $1,100 and books 44 demos, a CPA of $25 per demo, against $90 per demo from its campaigns to new audiences. The team caps frequency at three ads per person per week so people do not get annoyed.
Often confused with
Retargeting vs remarketing
Often used interchangeably. Strictly, retargeting means ads to past visitors, while remarketing also covers re-engaging past customers by email. Google calls its retargeting feature "remarketing".
Retargeting vs prospecting
Prospecting reaches people who have never interacted with you. Retargeting reaches people who have. You need prospecting to keep the retargeting audience growing.
Retargeting vs email nurture
Email nurture needs an email address and consent. Retargeting works on anonymous visitors through cookies or platform logins, which is why privacy rules affect it.
Tips
- Exclude people who already bought or signed up.
- Cap frequency and limit the audience window to 30 days or so.
- Show something new, such as a case study or an offer, not the same ad that did not work.
Related terms
Learn it in a free lesson
- The Marketing Funnel Explained, With a Worked Example (about 9 minutes)
Questions about it
- How do you calculate ROAS, and what is a good ROAS?: ROAS is ad revenue divided by ad spend. A good ROAS is any figure above your break-even ROAS, which is 1 divided by your gross margin…
Related in the AI glossary
Frequently asked questions
- How does retargeting work?
- A small tracking code (a pixel or tag) on your site adds visitors to an audience in the ad platform. The platform then shows your ads to that audience elsewhere.
- Is retargeting allowed under privacy laws?
- Yes, with consent where the law requires it, such as in the EU and UK. Use a cookie banner that actually blocks the tags until visitors agree, and mention it in your privacy policy.
- Why does retargeting have such a high ROAS?
- Partly because it reaches people already close to buying. Some of them would have bought anyway, so its measured results can overstate what the ads actually added.
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