What is retargeting?
Nicklas Segatz Mortensen · Growth Hacker · Fractional CMO · Meta Ads Nerd · 8 July 2026 · 3 min.
Definition
Retargeting (remarketing) is advertising aimed at people who've already interacted with you — visited the site, viewed a product, or added to cart without buying.
Also called: Retargeting, Remarketing
Sådan virker det
Retargeting rammer folk, der allerede har vist interesse — besøgt sitet, set et produkt, lagt i kurv. Konverteringsraten er høj, men pas på: en del ville have købt alligevel, så retargetings attribuerede ROAS overvurderer den reelle, inkrementelle effekt.
01High ROAS — but watch the incrementality
Retargeting almost always looks fantastic in attribution, because it reaches people who were already on their way to buying. But that's exactly why a large share of those sales aren't incremental: the customer would have bought anyway. The attributed ROAS overstates the real effect.
That doesn't make retargeting worthless — it catches people at the right moment and can lift conversion rate. But the budget should be steered with an eye on incrementality: test with a holdout, and don't let a pretty retargeting ROAS pull money away from the prospecting that creates the demand in the first place.
Frequently asked questions
Is retargeting incremental?+
Only partly. A share of the customers retargeting reaches would have converted anyway. That's why retargeting's attributed ROAS overstates the real, incremental effect — something a holdout test reveals.
How much of the budget should go to retargeting?+
Rarely the majority. Retargeting harvests demand; prospecting creates it. Cut too far into prospecting to chase a pretty retargeting ROAS, and the pipeline of new customers dries up.
Related terms
Glossary
What is prospecting?
Prospecting is top-of-funnel advertising aimed at new, cold audiences that have had no prior contact with the brand. The purpose is to build awareness and win entirely new customers.
Read the entry →Glossary
What is incrementality?
Incrementality is the added effect a marketing effort creates: the sales that happened only because the ad ran. Sales you'd have gotten anyway aren't incremental — whatever the platform credits.
Read the entry →Glossary
What are custom audiences?
A custom audience is an audience you build from your own data: customer lists, website visitors (via pixel/CAPI), app activity, video viewers or engagement on Meta.
Read the entry →
Nicklas Segatz Mortensen
Growth Hacker · Fractional CMO · Meta Ads Nerd at Oaksmond
Growth hacker and fractional CMO with 10+ years' experience and hundreds of millions in managed ad spend behind him. Background from larger Danish and international scale-ups, and from the agency world.
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