How does retargeting work?
Retargeting is an advertising technique that enables brands to display relevant ads to users who have previously visited their app or website. Such a technique has several stages, in simplified terms:
An internet user visits a website and looks for things they are interested in by browsing product pages.
A user engages with the content (checks out articles, learns about products, maybe adds some to the cart) and leaves.
RTB House analyzes a specific user's data and serves a brand's targeted ads across different websites or apps. The presented creatives are based on the specific user's activity on the client's website.
The user sees the ad, clicks on the banner, and returns to the website to make a purchase.
What are retargeting campaigns?
Retargeting is a digital advertising strategy that seeks to re-engage people and bring users back to your website or app to complete a purchase. This can include people who viewed your products but left, or cart abandoners who, for whatever reason, didn’t complete a purchase.
Because retargeting exclusively targets people who interacted with your brand with a high degree of intent but didn’t convert, this warm audience has a much higher likelihood of improving overall conversion rates than colder traffic.
What working with a retargeting partner looks like
Before any campaign starts, both sides have to agree on the business terms to ensure transparency and successful collaboration. The provider’s team analyzes each client's business requirements, defines the campaign goals, and selects the best solutions and technical details. This is a critical stage in setting up retargeting ads, whether on websites, apps, social media platforms, desktop, or mobile. Once both parties' responsibilities are fully understood, a contract is signed.
The next step is to begin actual preparations with the integration phase. There are three types of tasks that must be completed to complete the integration. Below, we explain the necessary steps to follow in this stage.
Key types of retargeting campaigns
Open Web retargeting
This is pixel-based retargeting that relies on a tracking technology or retargeting pixel placed on your site to engage users across the open internet. Powerful AI systems—like that of RTB House—gauge buying intent by analyzing user behavior and serve dynamic ads that reflect users' real-time interests.
Walled Gardens retargeting
Walled gardens are little universes in themselves. Yes, they are cordoned-off social media platforms, closed search and retail media environments, but because these platforms often have many millions of users, brands choose to deploy retargeting there. It should be noted that RTB House doesn't offer this kind of retargeting. Instead, it focuses on the open web.
List-based “retargeting”
Why the quotation marks? Because using your CRM and customer emails to send sales messages technically isn’t retargeting, it’s remarketing.
List-based retargeting uses contact data you already own, such as customer emails or CRM records. You upload the list to an ad platform, which matches it with user accounts and shows your ads to those people as they browse. It works well for reaching past customers or leads who haven’t come back, for example, with cross-sell offers or new product lines. It is often confused with remarketing. When you contact the same people directly by email or SMS, it is remarketing, not retargeting.
This article clears up the confusion.
Retargeting campaigns with RTB House
Personalization powered by Deep Learning
With the right communication, you can provide a person with products chosen for them using powerful recommendation systems. Through our Personalized Retargeting offer, we achieve effective personalization by leveraging Deep Learning. Underpinning 100% of RTB House’s recommendation engine, Deep Learning identifies non-obvious converters from complex, unstructured, real-time behavioral signals and learns autonomously, continuously improving targeting and optimization.
Shoppable creatives
Creative design is a vital component in setting up retargeting ads. Our specialists create state-of-the-art, intriguing creatives using dynamic retargeting formats. Once we reach the user with the ad, we want to ensure it has the potential to engage and motivate them to return to your website or application by clicking the banner.
Customer support
Our skilled, dedicated account managers support you in two ways. First, they analyze campaign efficiency and optimize your campaigns in a customized manner, drawing on real-world case studies. Second, they act as your advisors, offering consultation on your advertising strategy and suggesting additional actions to further boost your company’s efficiency, such as creating seasonal campaigns.
See also: Retargeting and Why it Should be in the Digital Toolbox of Every Home Improvement Organization
Retargeting campaign best practices & proven strategies
Automatic audience segmentation—Choose a provider that offers technology that can set strategies for individual audience segments, and dynamic retargeting creatives that are populated dynamically in real time from your live product feed.
Tailored frequency—Retargeting partners that deploy advanced AI—such as the proprietary Deep Learning of RTB House—prevent ad fatigue by displaying fresh, personalized recommendations and adjusting frequency based on the user.
Refresh creatives—Don’t reuse stale ads and the same basic formats. Keep things fresh to cut through the noise. While static brand banners require manual creative refreshes, shoppable creative by RTB House comprises dynamic ad types that adjust automatically to the user and the exact point in the customer journey.
Use sensible lookback windows—Choosing a lookback window that fits your business model aligns your tracking with actual consumer behavior. For example, low-cost products in general require little deliberation, whereas big-ticket items require multiple touchpoints and longer consideration.
Show clear CTAs—Use action-oriented language to compel the user to act, such as “buy now” or “get the product while stocks last.”
The advantage of advanced AI
Retargeting partners that deploy advanced AI—such as the proprietary Deep Learning of RTB House, enable the automatic setting of strategies for individual audience segments and refreshing creatives. Retargeting ads are refreshed in real time from your live product feed, preventing ad fatigue by displaying fresh, personalized recommendations.
Advanced AI finds the right users for your goal (e.g., ROAS growth) and optimizes your campaigns accordingly. Even so, you should keep a clear goal in mind, and constantly review results with your retargeting partner.
For an in-depth guide on best practices, read the 6 best retargeting practices and how to implement them.
Personalized retargeting use cases
Personalized retargeting for ecommerce retargeting (and other industries) has various applications. The most essential goal here is optimizing conversion/ROI. Here are some examples of how, in particular, we can use retargeting ad campaigns to ensure your company's success:
Cart abandoners: There are various reasons users leave a site without completing their purchase, but with retargeting, you can bring them back to your shop with even better-targeted offers. As demonstrated in this O2 case study, RTB House successfully re-engaged site visitors and cart abandoners, generating 5.5 million monthly banners and achieving a strong 0.35% CTR.
Recovery offers: For product page viewers who have left your site without adding a product to their cart. Offering discounts and personalized offers based on user behavior can significantly increase sales. And there’s no better time to deploy such offers than during promo periods. Furniture and design company GAIA, with the help of RTB House, achieved a 136% increase in revenue this way.
Dynamic product ads for lead-form abandoners: When a prospective customer who starts filling out a digital lead-generation form leaves before they hit submit, it doesn’t have to be the end of the story. They have shown active interest, and you can bring them back with specialized ads to recapture the lost lead.
Nurturing past purchasers: Winning a conversion is great, but to turn a one-time buyer into a loyal customer, you need messaging that guides and nurtures. Look no further than the campaigns that RTB House helped fashion brand Reserved deploy. They encouraged shoppers to make their first purchase and retargeted existing customers to make a second purchase.
Grow VIP purchases: Encourage your most engaged customers to buy more often and spend more per order. Exclusive offers, early access to sales, and premium creatives help protect and grow their lifetime value. See how RTB House helped members-only travel company Secret Escapes overperform revenue goals by 40%.
Cross-sell, niche, or high-margin goods: Advanced techniques like Deep Learning-based personalization are perfectly suited to gauging user intent and recommending products that haven’t been previously viewed. This makes it a potent solution for cross-selling and prioritizing high-margin goods through sub-campaigns, such as those that RTB House helped multi-category retailer Hepsiburada deploy, resulting in 175% more conversions.
First-purchase push: Customers are often cautious when making their first purchase on an online shop they haven't used before. Thanks to Deep Learning use cases, the right product selection, and the right timing, you increase the chance of turning visitors into buyers. This is what we helped fashion brand Manuka achieve with a 34.5% increase in month-on-month revenue from acquisition activities and a 33.6% lift in order volume.
Good to Know: Learn more about the benefits of mobile retargeting by reading What Is Mobile App Retargeting and How Does It Work?
How to measure success
Clicks are easy to count, easy to report, and largely disconnected from business value. That combination makes them a nebulous metric in digital advertising. When brands evaluate retargeting success, the #1 source of confusion and reporting discrepancy is the attribution model mismatch.
Last-paid-click is the standard retargeting and RTB House model. It gives 100% credit to the last paid touchpoint that influenced the user, recognizing that organic/direct visits are often downstream effects of the ad.
The last-non-direct-click model, however, can conflate paid display conversions with organic search or other channels, leading to standard 10–30% reporting discrepancies.
The problems are well documented. A meaningful share of clicks is accidental, especially on mobile, where a mistimed thumb swipe registers as genuine interest. Some are fraudulent, generated by bots rather than humans. And even legitimate clicks say nothing about what happens next. A campaign can produce an impressive click-through rate while delivering almost no conversions, because the people clicking were never going to purchase in the first place.
Evaluating true campaign impact requires measuring incrementality—understanding which conversions happened directly because of your ads versus those that would have occurred organically. To ensure your testing methodology is rigorous, review whether you should run incrementality testing or explore head-to-head testing vs incrementality testing.
With dozens of retargeting ad companies competing for the same budgets, structured comparison matters. For a clear evaluation framework, read our full guide on measuring retargeting value beyond clicks.
Privacy and the future of retargeting campaigns
The modern digital advertising ecosystem is undergoing a fundamental transformation as signal loss across browsers and operating systems reshapes traditional audience tracking. Brands are shifting their focus from third-party identifiers toward robust first-party data strategies to establish direct, value-driven relationships with consumers. To navigate these industry changes effectively, explore how cookieless retargeting works.
Ultimately, businesses that prioritize user trust and build privacy-centric data foundations will turn ongoing privacy shifts into a sustainable competitive advantage. RTB House builds its products with privacy by design, leveraging brands' most durable signals to engage their best customers. This is all done without pooling or selling of first-party data.
Mastering how to set up retargeting ads is crucial for campaign success. Ask us how retargeting campaigns can be leveraged in your business.
