Retargeting: How To Hook Your Audience

Imagine someone stepping into a convenience store on a hot and sunny day, grabbing a soft drink from a cooler, holding it for a moment, then changing their mind and stepping back outside. As this person sits on a bench on this muggy midsummer day, a bus happens to pass by, on the side of which is emblazoned a huge ad for the very beverage the person just passed on.

The idea of the refreshment is refreshed in their mind, they march right back into the store and buy the soda. In the physical world, that’s an example of retargeting. Of course, you could also call it a stroke of luck, at least for the marketers who placed the ad and for the beverage brand. In the digital world, however, marketers don’t have to hope a thirsty person will be curbside as a bus passes by. Online, marketers can reach their intended audience much more directly.

What Is Retargeting?

Allan Hou, sales director of TSL Australia, explains it like this: “Retargeting is showing ads to people who’ve already visited your website or app but didn’t buy, sign up, or take whatever action you wanted them to. It’s like when you look at a product online, leave without purchasing, and then keep seeing ads for it later while scrolling through social media or reading articles.”

Long story short, when you have a lead on the line but they don’t end up taking the proverbial bait (i.e., making a purchase online), retargeting is the sending down of another hook that meets them in a different part of the pond, but has similar bait to the one they almost went for earlier.

“Let’s say someone visits your site, checks out your freight services, clicks on the customs clearance page, stays there for a few minutes but leaves without sending a quote request,” says Hou. “With retargeting, that same person could later see your ad on LinkedIn, YouTube, or while browsing the news. The ad could show a testimonial from a similar business or offer a limited time quote. The goal is to remind them of what they already saw and give them a reason to come back and finish the process.”

How Does Retargeting Work?

Retargeting works by gently nudging people back in a direction they were already considering going. “The whole point of retargeting is reminding people about your brand, specifically those who have already shown interest by visiting your website, but haven’t converted yet,” says Andrius Surdokas, digital advertising specialist at Omnisend. “The success of such campaigns mostly depends on how relevant the offer is. The thing is, all users behave differently — some may have spent only a few seconds on your site, others may have already filled their carts. Some may be ready to convert, others may need more nurturing. Treating all of them the same way won’t lead anywhere.”

“That’s why you need to track user behaviors,” Surdokas continues. “Marketers typically use cookies or pixels for this. For example, the Facebook Pixel or Google Ads tag can be useful for tagging visitors for future targeting. You can then segment your audience and plan campaigns accordingly.”

Types of Retargeting

Site Retargeting

This common approach uses what is called a pixel on your website to track visitors and retarget them with ads on other websites and platforms. Also known as a tracking pixel or web beacon, a pixel is a small, usually invisible image or piece of code that website owners embed in their website’s HTML to monitor user activity and track website performance. These pixels help businesses understand user behavior, measure campaign effectiveness, and build audiences for targeted advertising.

Social Media Retargeting

This approach targets people who have engaged with your social media content online or in an app, such as by liking a post or following your brand. You can have them served curated ads that feel more like native posts (in the form of pictures, videos, carousels, and more) that appear in the course of their natural scrolling.

Email Retargeting

Commonly used after someone abandons a digital shopping cart, but also useful in other instances, email retargeting is one of the most direct approaches, and also one of the most likely ways to actually reach a user. There’s no guarantee they open the email and even less guarantee they convert, but they’re certainly likely to see it.

Impression Retargeting

There’s never a guarantee that a person saw your online ad even if it was served to them, but when an ad is served, it’s still referred to as an impression either way. This type of retargeting is a way to reach out to leads that have been served impressions, and try to ensure they come into more direct contact with the brand.

Benefits of Retargeting

Increased Conversions

When a customer returns to a site or app on which they were already close to taking an action the marketer had hoped to trigger, the party will be that much more likely to convert, be that making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a brochure.

Enhanced Brand Awareness

By its nature, retargeting puts a brand back in front of someone who already had at least some touchpoint with it. Retargeting and finding the person in another channel only increases their brand awareness, making conversion more likely, even if it takes time.

Better ROAS

Customer retargeting often means a better ROAS (return on ad spend) because you’re reaching out to parties that have already demonstrated at least some interest in your products or services, so the ads can be more focused and delivered to a smaller audience, which saves you money.

Considerations When Retargeting

Privacy Concerns

Retargeting in marketing raises privacy concerns due to the collection and use of personal data for targeted advertising. Some people don’t want their online activities tracked, even if your intention is simply to connect them with a brand they will love. You also need to make sure you don’t fall foul of GDPR or CCPA regulations.

Ad Fatigue

Everyone has a point at which ad fatigue kicks in, and once someone has simply seen enough of your brand’s ads, further exposure will have the inverse effect of what you want, annoying them and driving them away instead of to you.

Wasted Ad Spend

Done well, retargeting saves you money. Done wrong, it can be a total waste, with ads delivered to people who have either already converted or who are tired of your brand and are never going to take action.

How Can I Set Up a Retargeting Campaign?

1. Choose Your Platform

There are many different services you can use when you undertake ad retargeting, including Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, AdRoll, Facebook Ads, and Realize. Each has its benefits, depending on where your audience tends to spend the most time.

2. Establish Your Goals

Determine what you want users to do after seeing your retargeted ads. Do you want them to make a purchase, download a resource, sign up for a newsletter, or something else? Knowing this will guide your ad creative and retargeting strategies.

3. Create a Retargeting List

Use tools like tags, pixels, cookies, and email lists to create a master list of as many potential customers as you can.

4. Establish Tracking Mechanisms

Now is also the time to embed the tags or pixels onto your site, so you can actively track more users as they navigate around.

5. Launch Your Retargeting Campaign

Select the people on your list you want to target and start sending them curated ads. Make sure to establish your ad spend budget and calendar before launching.

Best Practices for Effective Retargeting

Segmentation

Retargeting segmentation involves dividing your retargeting audience into different groups based on their interactions with your website or brand. This allows you to create more personalized and effective retargeting campaigns by tailoring your messaging and offers to specific user behaviors and needs.

Avoiding Fatigue

Avoiding ad fatigue involves using strategies to prevent users from becoming bored or annoyed with the same ads, which can lead to a decline in engagement and a negative brand perception. This is achieved by balancing retargeting efforts with prospecting, diversifying ad placements and creatives, and implementing frequency caps.

Ad Creatives

Ad creatives are the advertisements you design and display to people who have previously interacted with your website or app. These ads aim to remind them of your brand, product, or service, and encourage them to re-engage and potentially convert.

Personalization

Retargeting personalization is a marketing technique where ads are displayed to users who have previously interacted with a website or brand, but are tailored to their specific behavior and interests. The goal is to reignite their interest in a particular product or service by showing them relevant ads and offers.

Effective Retargeting Strategies in 2025

“Retargeting is marketing to people who have already interacted with you in some way,” reiterates digital marketing expert Lucas Lee-Tyson. “It’s much easier to market to someone who has already transacted with you or interacted with your business in some way, rather than a brand new customer.”

Dynamic Product Ads

Dynamic ads are display ads that update in real time based on user behavior, such as showing related products or matching accessories to items that are actively being viewed.

AI-Powered Personalization

Many marketers these days turn to AI to help the rapid generation of ads that will be highly relevant to a given population, or even to an individual user. The more data gathered about the party, the more effective these can be.

Multi-Channel Approach

Marketers who encounter a user in one realm can reapproach them in another with potentially greater success. Say you get a lead on LinkedIn, but that person actually spends more time on TikTok. Messaging there might be better received, despite it being about the same brand.

Measuring the Success of Retargeting Campaigns

There are a few KPIs (key performance indicators) to track when you’re conducting a retargeting campaign:

Return on Ad Spend

Calculating your ROAS alone can tell you so much about your ad campaign’s success. How much did you spend, and how much did you make? If the latter is a lot bigger than the former, then that was successful retargeting.

Conversion Rate

Because conversions are not always sales that can be measured in dollars, calculate your total conversion rate, including things like sign-ups, downloads, likes, follows, and more.

Cost Per Acquisition

Abbreviated as CPA, this is the amount of marketing cash that was needed to be spent to acquire a new customer through a retargeting campaign. The CPA is usually lower with retargeting than it is with an acquisition of a fully new user.

Optimizing Retargeting for Best Performance

Personalize the Ad Experience

Don’t treat all website visitors or app users the same way. Segment based on actions like page views, time on site, and if they’ve previously converted. Use dynamic and curated ads that speak to the individual.

Optimize Timing

To avoid ad fatigue, use frequency caps to limit the number of times a user sees your retargeting ads, and determine the ideal length of your campaign before launching it. This can require some research, but it’s worth it.

Test and Reassess

As with any marketing campaign, with retargeting, it’s essential that you execute A/B testing so you can see what’s working and what’s not (or what’s working better, at any rate).

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Retargeting

Ineffective CTAs

The CTA, or call to action, is the prime directive of an ad. If you get an ad in front of someone who is already familiar with your brand and your CTA is weak, confusing, off-message, or otherwise poor, you have just squandered an opportunity.

Failing to Run A/B Tests

If you don’t run at least two different versions of retargeted ads, you won’t be able to collect data that lets you see what’s working best, and you won’t be able to iterate. Remember, tools that allow you to continuously A/B test in real time are a huge help.

Overly Broad Retargeting

Retargeting is where you narrow things down and hone in on your audience with laser focus, customizing ads to suit each user to the highest degree possible. Go too general with things, and people may have less sense of what you do and offer, rather than more.

Best Platforms for Retargeting

Google Ads

Google Ads provides comprehensive remarketing capabilities across the Google Display Network, YouTube, and search results. You can create remarketing lists for search ads and leverage dynamic remarketing to show ads based on specific products or items viewed.

AdRoll

Known for its social retargeting capabilities, AdRoll allows you to reach visitors across platforms like Facebook, X, and other publisher websites. It also offers features like dynamic ads, email marketing automation, and cross-channel attribution.

LinkedIn Ads

Ideal for B2B marketers, LinkedIn Ads offer precise targeting based on job titles, industries, and company sizes. They also have a “Matched Audiences” feature that allows you to retarget users who visited your website or engaged with your LinkedIn profile.

Perfect Audience

Perfect Audience offers a multi-channel approach to retargeting, integrating with HubSpot for seamless integration with your marketing activities. It allows for easy segmentation of visitors based on various user-behavior rules.

Key Takeaways

“Retargeting is a way to show your adverts to people who have shown interest in your business in the past, but haven’t taken the next step,” says Iqbal Ahmad, founder and CEO of the Britannia School of Academics. “You need to monitor user behaviour closely and adjust the campaigns accordingly. Ensure you understand your audience’s mindset and design content and campaigns that address their concerns. Using discounts and offers works wonders for my business, and I believe it will work for everyone if done correctly.”

“Retargeting is a very thoughtful form of digital marketing meant to reach out to users that already interacted with a brand but haven’t ever converted,” adds Mike Szczesny, owner and vice president of EDCO Awards & Specialties. “Businesses can serve specific advertisements to these users while they navigate browsing pages thanks to cookies or tracking pixel advertising systems. Hence, brand recall is kept alive to stimulate return interactions. This effort is effective as it concentrates on known interested users and their chances of converting are significantly higher than new users.”

“Retargeting isn’t about bombarding someone until they click,” concludes Mary Sahagun,

founder and PR strategist at TargetLink. “It’s about sequencing a conversation they already started. You’re not reminding them that you exist, you’re reminding them why you matter. The most effective retargeting isn’t repetitive — it’s progressive. Each touchpoint should deepen context, answer unspoken objections, or move the user closer to trust.”

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is cross-device retargeting?

Cross-device retargeting is a digital marketing strategy that allows advertisers to target the same user across multiple devices, such as phones, tablets, and desktops, with consistent messaging and offers. It leverages cross-device tracking to identify a user’s online activity across different devices and serves relevant ads to them based on their behavior.

How is AI being used in retargeting?

AI is revolutionizing retargeting by enabling more precise audience segmentation, personalized ad delivery, and continuous optimization. AI algorithms analyze user behavior, browsing history, and other data points to create detailed customer profiles, identify patterns, and predict future actions. This allows for the delivery of targeted ads that are more likely to resonate with individual users and drive conversions.

What are the implications of privacy changes for retargeting in 2025?

Privacy changes, particularly the decline of third-party cookies and the rise of privacy-focused technologies, significantly impact retargeting, leading to reduced effectiveness and a need for new strategies. Advertisers face challenges in tracking users across the web and showing personalized ads, forcing them to adapt to new approaches like contextual advertising and first-party data.

Cookies vs pixels: What are the key differences?

Cookies and pixels are both used in tracking people’s activity on a site, but they serve different purposes. Cookies are small text files stored on a user’s browser, while pixels are small, invisible images used to track user activity on a website. Cookies store information about a user’s browsing history and preferences, while pixels are primarily used for tracking and analysis.