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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