← Glossary
What is retargeting?
Retargeting shows ads to people who have already visited your site or engaged with your business.
It consistently reports the best numbers in any ad account, because it's advertising to people who already know you. That makes it look like the most effective thing you do.
The trap is that retargeting doesn't create demand, it harvests it. Some of those people would have come back anyway, and every conversion it claims is a conversion something else generated. Scaling retargeting without scaling the prospecting that fills it produces excellent metrics and a shrinking business.
It also fatigues quickly, because the audience is small by definition. Frequency caps matter more here than anywhere else.