Remarketing
Remarketing that brings back the visitors who nearly bought
Remarketing, also called retargeting, shows ads to people who have already visited your site, watched your videos or engaged with you, to bring them back to finish what they started. We build remarketing audiences on Google and Meta from real behaviour, keep the frequency low enough not to annoy anyone, and measure it carefully, because remarketing is the easiest kind of advertising to make look better than it is.
In short
- Audiences by intent, not one big list
- Frequency capped
- Measured against what would have happened anyway
Not sure where to start? We review your account, tracking and landing pages first, in writing.
Why remarketing needs careful measurement
Someone who has already put a product in their basket is likely to come back and buy whether you show them an ad or not. If a remarketing campaign takes credit for that sale, its return on ad spend looks excellent and tells you nothing. We keep remarketing in its own campaigns, report it separately from prospecting, and where budgets allow, test it against a held-out group to see the real difference it makes.
Audiences that are worth paying for
| Audience | Intent | What to show |
|---|---|---|
| Basket or checkout abandoners | Very high | The product, a reminder of delivery or returns terms; rarely a discount |
| Product or service page viewers | High | The thing they looked at, with a reason to choose you |
| Pricing or quote page visitors | High | A prompt to book the call or the audit |
| Blog and guide readers | Low | The next useful piece, not a hard sell |
| Existing customers | Varies | Replenishment, an upgrade or a related product; or excluded |
Platforms and privacy
Google remarketing runs across Display, YouTube, Gmail and search, and Meta across Facebook and Instagram. Both depend on consent: visitors in the UK must agree to marketing cookies before they can be added to an audience, under UK privacy law. Customer Match lists from your own data have their own rules in Google's customer data policies, linked below. Audiences are therefore smaller than they used to be, which is one more reason to spend them on high-intent groups.
Frequency and fatigue
The quickest way to turn a warm visitor cold is to show them the same ad twenty times. We cap how often an ad can be shown, rotate creative, and stop showing ads to someone once they convert. Remarketing should feel like a reminder, not a pursuit.
Related
Where this connects
Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram)
Prospecting, retargeting and creative testing on Facebook and Instagram.
E-commerce PPC
Paid search and social for online shops, measured on return on ad spend.
Analytics and tracking
GA4, Tag Manager, server-side tagging and enhanced conversions, set up so the numbers are true.
YouTube Ads
Video campaigns planned around what the viewer does next, not view counts.
Questions people ask us
What is the difference between remarketing and retargeting?
None in practice. Google calls it remarketing and many other platforms call it retargeting; both mean showing ads to people who have interacted with you before.
Does remarketing need cookie consent?
Yes. In the UK a visitor must consent to marketing cookies before they can be added to a remarketing audience. Consent mode passes their choice to Google's tags.
How long should someone stay in a remarketing audience?
As long as the decision usually takes. A few days for an impulse purchase, a few weeks for a considered one, several months for a B2B service. Longer than that mostly reaches people who have moved on.
Is remarketing annoying?
It can be. Low frequency caps, fresh creative, and removing people once they buy keep it useful rather than intrusive.
Stop guessing. Start scaling.
Find out where your paid advertising is losing money and where the next profitable campaign is hiding. The audit is free and you keep it whatever you decide.