There was a time when the majority of my ad budget was spent on remarketing in one form or another: Website visitors, email list, followers, post engagement, and more. I’ve abandoned much of this in favor of Meta’s algorithmic targeting, but there are exceptions.
There are times when remarketing continues to make good, smart sense.
Don’t misunderstand my intent. I still think advertisers use remarketing far too often. It’s not only less effective than it once was (and advertisers often misinterpret the effectiveness of their remarketing results), but it’s also often unnecessary.
Let me explain…
Why Remarketing is Mostly Unnecessary
Don’t confuse the message here. Reaching people who are most closely connected to your business remains valuable.
One of the primary reasons that a separate remarketing ad set is mostly unnecessary now is that algorithmic targeting will prioritize these people anyway. When using Advantage+ Audience, Meta prioritizes conversion history, pixel data, and prior engagement with your ads.
You can prove this with the help of audience segments. I’ve seen repeatedly that Meta spends in the range of 25 to 35 percent of my budget on my existing customers and engaged audience (those who are on my email list or have visited my website, but who haven’t yet bought from me).
Here’s an example, using Advantage+ Audience without suggestions…
I’ve also seen this when using original audiences going broad…
Here’s an example using two different ad sets: One using Advantage+ Audience without suggestions and one using only remarketing.
When using Advantage+ Audience without suggestions, Meta spent 45 percent of my budget on the same people that I otherwise targeted specifically in a separate ad set. By giving the algorithm more freedom, I found that it maintained a more reasonable frequency compared to when I only targeted the remarketing group.
Meta now combines remarketing and prospecting to create an optimal balance. It will otherwise be more expensive to reach your remarketing audience (which tends to also be the most likely to perform the action that you want), but the prospecting group is larger and cheaper.
For this reason, general remarketing (where you target broad groups of website visitors, email list, and people who have engaged with your page) is rarely necessary now. It happens automatically.
Misinterpretation of Results
I should also point out that one reason some advertisers continue to swear by remarketing is a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of their results. Whenever I see someone share conversion results or ROAS that seem too good to be true, it’s often because the results are inflated.
To be clear, remarketing results should be good. But they will also be inflated. This is a great opportunity to break down your results and test how good they actually are.
Use the Compare Attribution Settings feature and break down your results by attribution setting. It would also be good to use First Conversion reporting (or at least both First Conversion and All Conversions).
When remarketing, you can expect a disproportionately high concentration in the 1-Day View column. That’s usually because of two different scenarios:
1. You emailed people on the same day they were shown your ad.
2. Regular website visitors happened to visit on the same day they were shown your ad.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that the ad didn’t do anything. In some cases, these customers saw it and it contributed to their buying decision. But a very common scenario is that they didn’t even see your ad. They would have made the purchase anyway.
View-through conversions are much more valuable when they come from new customers. They saw your ad or were impacted by it, but they didn’t click it. They remembered the product or brand and Googled you later. Then they made a purchase.
But when remarketing, at least a decent number of the view-through conversions are fluff.
When Remarketing Makes Sense
While remarketing is often unnecessary, there are some exceptions where it remains relevant.
Here are a few to consider…
1. A specific message for a specific group of people.
The most common example is an abandoned cart scenario. You want to show a different ad to people who have recently added your product to their cart but haven’t purchased. You may want to offer a discount to incentivize the sale.
Of course, it’s debatable whether this is necessary. Meta should prioritize people who have added to cart when determining who will see your ads. It will be more expensive to isolate those people in a separate ad set. It’s worth testing.
I’m actually using a variation of this right now. I have a special offer, but I only want a very specific segment of my email list to see it. While it’s open to the public, my preference for this higher-value offer is people who have bought from me before.
In this case, I am targeting the same people I am emailing about this offer. I even refer to the email in the ad copy.
With this approach, I understand that the ad is only part of the sales pitch. Since it’s a high-dollar commitment, I’m hoping that it will help motivate these people to complete the sale.
I know that my ads will only be partly responsible for the conversions that are reported in Ads Manager. But my hope is to optimize the total number of sign-ups. Since the audience is small, the total amount of ad spend will be reasonably small, too. And since the sticker amount is about $1,000, it’s a low-risk approach that makes sense.
2. Low budget and a challenge to get results.
You’re trying to sell a high-dollar product, but you’ve only been given $50 or less of budget per day. You don’t have the option of building leads and need to go straight to the sale. Remarketing should be an option.
Yes, remarketing will happen naturally if you target more broadly. But maybe the remarketing audience is relatively small. Regardless, you may struggle to achieve meaningful results.
Remarketing doesn’t guarantee results here, but it’s at least a lower-cost option.
3. Top of funnel optimization.
Optimizing for link clicks, landing page views, video views, post engagement, or anything other than a conversion can be problematic. It’s even more so when algorithmic targeting is at play because Meta will do all it can to find you the cheapest action that you want. This is often at the expense of quality. By remarketing, you can limit your audience to people you’ve already determined are higher affinity.
I’ve done this when promoting my blog posts or Reels. I know that I’ll get lots of low-quality clicks or plays if I allow the algorithm to search out anyone to engage with them. But if my goal is to get more of the people who have already proven to engage with my content, I will isolate them with a custom audience.
Beware of Soft Remarketing
While remarketing still has its place, there’s a specific strategy that you should avoid and it goes like this…
1. Run an ad that optimizes for link clicks, landing page views, or video views.
2. Create an audience of the people who engaged with the first ad.
3. Target the people who engaged with the first ad.
The reason this is problematic is the issue we’ve already discussed about top-of-the-funnel optimization. If you optimize for link clicks, landing page views, video views, or just about any other action other than a conversion, you can expect low-quality activity. You are creating a custom audience of low-quality activity. And then you are remarketing to a low-quality audience.
If you’re going to use remarketing, be sure that you’re actually targeting a high-quality group of people. Investigate how that audience was created in the first place. Organically-generated audiences or those built when optimizing for conversions will typically be your best bet.
Let Algorithmic Targeting Do Most of the Work
Remarketing still has its place, but you should allow algorithmic targeting to do the heavy lifting — especially when optimizing for purchases. “Algorithmic targeting” doesn’t only include going broad or using Advantage+ Audience. It includes any situation where your audience is expanded (and that covers a high percentage of our inputs now).
Broader targeting should take up the bulk of your ad spend. While remarketing zeroes in on the people who are already close to you, there’s limited incremental lift. You also want to bring in new people who would have never bought from you if not for your ads.
Remarketing is a good short-term, low-risk play. Broader targeting is a slower, long-term play that will help assure you have a remarketing audience to reach in the future.
Your Turn
Do you still use remarketing strategies? What specific examples of remarketing success or challenges can you share?
Let me know in the comments below!
