Retargeting
Retargeting serves ads to users who have already interacted with your brand: visited the site, watched a video, or added to cart.
What does Retargeting actually mean?
Retargeting (sometimes 'remarketing') serves ads to users who have already shown intent by visiting a product page, adding to cart, starting checkout, or watching a percentage of your video. It's the highest-converting paid surface because the audience is warm.
Most retargeting funnels run 7-day, 30-day and 90-day windows in parallel, with different creative messaging per stage. 7-day cart abandoners get urgency-driven creative; 30-day visitors get social proof; 90-day audiences get win-back offers. This sequencing is sometimes called a 'retargeting waterfall.'
The limiting factor on retargeting is audience size. You need enough warm traffic to keep the funnel fed. Most brands spend 60-70% of paid budget on cold prospecting and 30-40% on retargeting, with the cold side feeding the retargeting pool.
Example
A user adds a product to cart on a Shopify store but leaves without buying. Within 24 hours, they see a Meta DPA ad with that exact product plus a 10% off coupon. That's classic 7-day cart-abandon retargeting.
When it matters
Retargeting has the highest ROAS of any paid surface but the smallest audience pool. Pair it with strong cold prospecting to keep the funnel fed.
Related terms
Custom audience
A custom audience is a list of known users (emails, phone numbers, pixel events, or video viewers) used for retargeting or seeding lookalikes.
DPA
DPA serves automatically-generated ads pulling product data from a catalog feed, personalized to each user's likely interest.
Lookalike audience
A lookalike audience targets new users who resemble an existing source list, typically your customers or your high-LTV cohort.
Frequency cap
A frequency cap limits how often a single user sees your ad over a time window, preventing audience burnout and creative fatigue.
Find out which ads actually win.
advrt builds ads around your real product photos, tests them live on Meta and judges each one against your own account. Free plan, no credit card.