Definition
What is remarketing?
Remarketing (or retargeting) means showing ads to people who have already interacted with your business: a page visit, an add to cart, a video watched, an interaction with a post. These people form audience lists in Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn or Microsoft Advertising. Remarketing harvests demand that other channels created: it does not create it.
How a remarketing list is built
The platform's tag (the Google tag, the Meta pixel, LinkedIn's Insight Tag) records the visitors to your site who have given their consent. Lists are then split by pages visited and path taken: visitors to a service page, abandoned carts, customers who have just bought.
People who interact with your posts on social media also form a low-cost retargeting audience. It is the only direct, measurable link between your organic presence and your sales.
Why its cost per acquisition misleads
Remarketing almost always shows the lowest cost per acquisition in the account. That figure misleads: the campaign did not create the demand, it harvested the demand the other campaigns generated. Judging remarketing on its CPA alone leads you to pour the whole budget into it, then watch total volume collapse for lack of new visitors.
Each use is therefore measured with its own metric:
- Site visitors: the recovery rate.
- Abandoned carts: the sales recovered.
- Customers: repeat purchases and customer lifetime value.
Consent and frequency
A remarketing list relies on cookies or identifiers. In Quebec, Law 25 requires that a tool able to profile a visitor be turned off by default: a visitor who refuses cookies should therefore not enter the list.
Frequency matters too. Beyond a certain number of exposures, repetition mostly produces irritation. For a professional who belongs to a regulatory order, it can also raise an ethics issue: the lawyers' code forbids urging anyone, in a pressing or repeated manner, to use their services. A frequency cap and a short window address both problems.
Fictional example: an online store puts most of its Meta budget into remarketing, because its CPA there is $15 against $60 in prospecting. Three months later, its lists shrink for lack of new visitors. The remarketing CPA rises and total sales fall. The prospecting that looked expensive was in fact feeding the remarketing sales.
We treat remarketing as a harvest: it depends on the campaigns that bring in new visitors and does not replace them. On Meta, it most often serves to win back visitors qualified by search: that is where the platform costs the least per sale.
We build lists by pages visited and by the step where the person stopped. We exclude customers who have just bought. We feed the lists only with visitors' consent.
Not to be confused with
- Cart abandonment
- Cart abandonment is a behaviour measured on the site. Abandoned-cart remarketing is one possible response: it uses advertising to bring back people who left without paying.
- Email list
- A remarketing list lives in an advertising platform that can shrink it or change its rules without notice. An email list belongs to your business: you write to your subscribers without going through an advertising platform.
Related concepts
- Google Ads
- Meta advertising
- Social media advertising
- Cart abandonment
- Customer lifetime value
- Organic reach
- Advertising ethics compliance
- Demand Gen
Further reading
- Social media advertising: choosing a platform and budget
- Organic social media: what role should it play in your marketing?
- Meta Ads: how to assess your Facebook and Instagram campaigns
- Advertising for regulated professionals in Quebec: ethics rules to consider
- Email list value: calculating what a subscriber is worth
- Facebook ads for B2B: generating and qualifying leads
Related services
Frequently asked questions
Why do my remarketing campaigns have the best CPA in the account?
Because they reach people who have already shown an interest. They did not create the demand: they harvest the demand your other campaigns generated. Putting the whole budget into them would reduce the number of new visitors who feed the lists.
Do I need my visitors' consent to do remarketing?
In Quebec, Law 25 requires that a tool able to profile a visitor be turned off by default. We therefore feed remarketing lists only with visitors who have accepted cookies. This answer is for information: it does not replace legal advice.
