Is retargeting on Meta still worth it?

For years, everyone built their Meta account the same way. One campaign to introduce the brand, another for people who showed interest, and a last one to bring back site visitors. That last one is retargeting. It was long the most profitable campaign in the account. Today, it has often become useless. And sometimes it costs more than it brings in.

What changed

Retargeting made sense when Meta’s targeting was weak. You had to tell it exactly who to talk to, and how much budget to put behind each audience to capture its full potential.

That is no longer the case. Meta now finds the right people for each ad on its own, including those who already know your brand. In most cases, it also gets the targeting intensity right.

An example we looked at in our May training shows this clearly. One campaign, two ads.

The first is a short video introducing the product. It spent about $43,000. More than 95% of that went to people who didn’t know the brand yet. Each of them saw it once, on average.

The second is a simple image announcing a 40% discount. It spent about $17,000. But this time, a large share of the budget went to people who had already interacted with the brand. And each of them saw it more than twice.

Nobody set anything by hand. Meta worked out on its own that the video was there to introduce the product, and the offer was there to convince people who were on the fence.

In other words, retargeting already happens inside your campaigns. Adding a separate one often means doing the same job twice.

What an extra retargeting campaign costs you

The first problem is diluted effort. Splitting retargeting from acquisition can hurt your acquisition campaign. Isolated in its own campaign, the retargeting segment picks up sales that the acquisition campaign started. The result: your acquisition campaign looks like it underperforms, and your retargeting campaign looks like it overperforms. So you shift budget toward retargeting. The consequence is simple. The source dries up, and your volume drops week after week.

The second is fatigue. A site rarely has that many visitors. A retargeting campaign ends up showing them the same ads over and over. After a while, the ads annoy more than they convince.

The third is paying for sales you would have made anyway. Someone who added a product to their cart yesterday has a good chance of coming back. If an ad shows up in between, Meta takes credit for the sale. The result looks great. In reality, you would have made that sale without paying for it.

Our rule: never more than 20% of budget

On our clients’ accounts, retargeting never goes above 20% of total budget. On some accounts, it is even lower.

When we take over an account that is above that line, it is almost always the sign of an account going in circles. It talks a lot to existing customers and not enough to new ones.

We also watch frequency, meaning how many times the same person sees an ad. In retargeting, we stay under five impressions per week. Beyond that, you are mostly paying to annoy people.

When retargeting still makes sense

There are still cases where a dedicated campaign is justified.

When the purchase takes time. A valuable piece of jewelry, a piece of furniture, a B2B service. The customer thinks it over for weeks and compares. Reminding them of your brand at the right moment can make the difference.

During a limited-time offer. Sales, Black Friday, a launch. Here, you want to reach people who already know the brand first, over a short period.

To tell a story in several steps. A first ad introduces the brand, a second shows the product, a third answers an objection. Meta lets you set up these sequences.

In every other case, a single well-built campaign does the job better.

What we look at instead

Rather than splitting the account into campaigns, we look at where the money actually goes.

For each ad, Meta now shows the share of budget spent on three audiences: people who don’t know the brand, people who have already interacted with it, and existing customers.

That is the metric to follow. If most of the budget goes to people who already know the brand, the account isn’t growing. It is spinning in place.

And if you really want to push Meta toward new customers, there are now rules that let you bid more for them. That works far better than a retargeting campaign, because it acts on the whole account.

Not sure how much of your budget goes to existing customers? We can look at it together. The review is free, with no commitment.