What Is Remarketing?
Remarketing (also called retargeting) is a digital advertising strategy that serves ads to users who have already visited a website, viewed specific products, added items to their cart, or engaged with a brand on social media. By targeting warm audiences who have already shown interest, remarketing campaigns achieve significantly higher conversion rates than prospecting campaigns targeting cold audiences.
Remarketing works by placing a tracking pixel on a website that records visitor behaviour. This data is then used on advertising platforms (Google, Meta, TikTok) to build audiences for targeted ad serving.
Creative Strategy for Remarketing
Remarketing creative should match the audience's stage in the funnel. Cart abandoners (highest intent) should see the exact products they added to cart, with clear CTAs and potentially a discount. Product viewers (mid-funnel) should see lifestyle imagery or video that reinforces the emotional appeal of the product. General site visitors (lower intent) should see brand awareness or bestseller content.
Dynamic product ads - which automatically pull product details and images from a feed - are the most scalable remarketing creative format. Using Bryft-enhanced product images in the feed dramatically improves the visual quality of these automatically generated ads.
Remarketing Audience Segments
- Cart abandoners (highest intent - show exact product + urgency)
- Product page visitors (show lifestyle imagery for that product)
- Category visitors (show bestsellers in the visited category)
- Past purchasers (cross-sell or upsell related products)
- Video viewers (retarget people who watched a specific product video)
Real-World Example
An electronics retailer segments their remarketing audiences by intent level. Cart abandoners receive a dynamic ad showing the exact product with a 5% time-limited discount (7x ROAS). Product page visitors receive a lifestyle video of the same product in use (4.2x ROAS). Past purchasers receive an accessory recommendation ad (5.8x ROAS). Each segment's ROAS is above campaign average because of precise audience and creative alignment.