Retargeting: ads for people who have already visited your site

Retargeting, or remarketing as Google calls it, means showing ads to people who have already interacted with your business: they visited your site, viewed a product, left something in their basket or watched one of your videos. It works because you are talking to someone who already knows you, as long as it is done with consent, in moderation and with a message that fits the point where they stopped.

Most people don't buy on their first visit. Ads for people who have visited your site remind them that you exist and give them a reason to come back.

How retargeting works

Your site has a small piece of code from each platform: the Meta Pixel for Facebook and Instagram, and the Google tag for Google Ads. When the visitor allows it, the tag records which pages they viewed and what they did, and the platform adds them to an audience. You then set a rule, for example: “show this ad to people who viewed a product in the last month but didn't buy”.

Consent is the first step, not a detail. In Europe, the usual practice is for advertising tags to load only after the visitor accepts marketing cookies in the banner. For Google, Consent Mode v2 passes this choice on, and personalised advertising requires consent for both ad_user_data and ad_personalization. As a result, your audiences will be smaller than your number of visitors, and that is to be expected.

Which audiences to build

Start with a few audiences that genuinely differ in intent. An example for an e-shop:

• All visitors: everyone who came to the site, for ads that remind them of the brand.
• People who viewed a product or category: they showed interest in something specific.
• People who added to the basket or started checkout without buying: your “warmest” audience.
• People who watched one of your videos on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube: they know you, even if they have never visited your site.
• People who engaged with your profile, sent you a message or saved a post.
• Customers: people who have already bought, so you can exclude them or show them something different.

For a services site, the audiences change: people who viewed the pricing page, people who opened the form without submitting it, people who read more than one article. For each audience you also set how many days someone stays in it, within the limits each platform allows. For a product people buy quickly, a short period. For a service the customer thinks over for weeks, a longer one.

The platforms also need a minimum audience size before they will show ads. If your site has little traffic, combine audiences or extend the period instead of slicing them into very small segments.

Creatives for each stage

Using the same ad for everyone is the most common mistake. Each person stopped at a different point and needs a different answer:

• People who just passed through: who you are and why they should remember you. A video of the product in use, customer reviews, the behind-the-scenes of your work.
• People who viewed a product: that same product or related ones. In Meta and Google Ads you can connect your product catalogue, so the ad automatically shows whatever each person viewed. This is where clean product photos make the difference.
• People who abandoned their basket: an answer to the reason they stopped, such as shipping cost and time, returns, payment methods or a size guide. A discount is not the only answer. If you always offer one, you teach customers to abandon their baskets.
• Customers: complementary products, a new collection, or a reminder for products that run out and get bought again.

Avoid messages that show you are watching, such as “We saw you were looking at this last night”. The product can appear in the ad without you commenting on it.

Frequency, exclusions and privacy

Retargeting has its limits. If someone sees the same ad again and again, the reminder becomes an annoyance. Keep an eye on frequency, meaning the average number of times each person has seen the ad. When frequency rises and results fall, change the creative or shorten the audience duration. In some campaign types you can also set a frequency cap. Exclusions are just as important:

• Exclude people who have bought, at least from ads for the product they already have.
• Exclude people who have already sent an enquiry, if you are a services business.
• Exclude your retargeting audiences from your campaigns for new customers, so you know what each one brings in.
• If many people leave straight away, keep only those who viewed more than one page or reached a product page.

On privacy, your cookie policy and privacy policy must say which tools you use and for what purpose, and visitors must be able to change their minds easily. If you upload customer lists to the platforms, you need a legal basis for doing so. In sectors such as health, the platforms restrict targeting based on sensitive information, so check their current policies before you build audiences, and talk to your legal adviser about the legal questions.

At THPAUL, in our Meta Ads campaigns we set up audiences and retargeting together with the campaign structure, check the pixel and conversions, and make the creatives and their variations in our studio. Measurement is set up with a consent mechanism for visitors.