Retargeting
Paid MediaAlso: Remarketing · Retargeting Ads
Quick definition
Retargeting is a paid advertising technique where ads are shown specifically to people who have already interacted with your business, by visiting your website, watching a video, or appearing in a customer list. It is used to re-engage people who did not convert on their first visit.
How it varies across Australia
Retargeting audiences are almost always smaller than prospecting audiences but convert at a higher rate. The gap in performance between the two varies sharply by industry and by how well the retargeting creative is tailored to the audience segment.
See acquisition performance benchmarks across Australian industries →The two main methods
A tracking pixel placed on your site fires when a visitor lands. The ad platform stores a cookie and serves your ads to that person across its network.
You upload a list of customer emails or phone numbers. The platform matches those contacts to its own user accounts and shows ads to the matches.
What it actually means
Retargeting solves a simple problem. Most people who find your business do not buy on the first visit. They are browsing, comparing, distracted or just not ready. Retargeting keeps you visible to those people after they leave, so when they are ready, you are still in the conversation.
Pixel-based retargeting works by placing a small piece of tracking code on your website. When someone visits, the platform drops a cookie. That cookie follows the visitor across the web and inside the platform's own apps, triggering your ad to appear. You do not need their email. You need the pixel and their browser.
List-based retargeting works the other way. You already have the contact detail, usually an email address from a purchase, a form fill or a CRM export. You upload that list to a platform like Meta or Google. The platform matches the email to an account and shows your ad to that person. Useful for re-engaging lapsed customers and for extending offers to existing contacts.
The practical difference between the two is signal quality. A pixel audience tells you someone visited a page. A list audience tells you something about who they actually are. Both are warmer than prospecting audiences. Neither is magic.
Retargeting is not a second chance at the same pitch. It is a chance at a better one.
How it shows up
Retargeting shows up in your ad account as a separate audience segment, usually labelled as a custom audience or remarketing list. Performance typically shows as lower CPA and higher conversion rates compared to cold prospecting campaigns targeting the same product.
It also shows up in attribution reports as a high-volume last-click channel, which flatters its contribution. Many retargeting clicks are capturing intent that already existed rather than creating new intent. Incrementality testing is the only honest way to separate how much retargeting is converting versus how much it is intercepting people who would have converted anyway.
The Australian context
Australia's Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) govern how personal data including cookie data and uploaded customer lists can be used for advertising. Businesses using list-based retargeting need to ensure that the original data collection included consent for that use, and that the list upload itself does not breach cross-border data transfer obligations.
Apple's iOS privacy changes have also reduced the reach of pixel-based retargeting for Australian advertisers, particularly on Meta. Audience sizes have shrunk for many businesses since the change. The practical response has been a shift toward first-party list audiences and broader contextual targeting to fill the gap.
Where people get this wrong
Related terms
Common questions
What is the difference between retargeting and remarketing?
The terms are used interchangeably in most contexts. Historically, remarketing referred specifically to re-engaging customers via email, while retargeting referred to display and social ads. Google still uses 'remarketing' in its own products. Most practitioners treat them as the same thing.
How big does my retargeting audience need to be?
Meta requires a minimum of around 1,000 matched users before a custom audience is usable for ads. Google has similar thresholds. Below those minimums the platform will not serve the campaign. For most smaller Australian businesses, monthly site traffic needs to reach at least a few thousand visits before pixel-based retargeting becomes a viable channel.
Does retargeting work after iOS privacy changes?
Pixel-based retargeting audiences have shrunk for most Meta advertisers since Apple's App Tracking Transparency changes reduced the number of users whose visits are tracked. List-based retargeting using first-party data is less affected. The channel still works but smaller audience sizes mean frequency management matters more than it did before.
How long should I retarget someone?
Window length depends on your sales cycle. A seven-day window suits fast ecommerce decisions. A 90-day window suits B2B or high-consideration purchases where the research phase is long. Keep the window as short as the product decision allows. Retargeting someone 60 days after they bounced off your homepage is usually wasted spend.
Keep exploring
About New Rebellion
New Rebellion is a marketing intelligence consultancy. We build tools, score Australian businesses on how their marketing actually performs, and publish Debrief every day. This dictionary is part of how we work in the open.
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