What Is Remarketing?
Remarketing is a digital advertising strategy that allows you to show ads specifically to people who have previously visited your website, engaged with your app, or interacted with your brand on social media. Because these users are already familiar with your business, remarketing ads convert at significantly higher rates than ads shown to cold audiences often at a lower cost per click as well.
Remarketing works by placing a small piece of code (a pixel or tag) on your website that adds visitors to audience lists. When those visitors browse other websites, watch YouTube videos, or scroll through Facebook, your ads follow them. Google Display Network remarketing, Meta Pixel remarketing, and LinkedIn Matched Audiences are the most widely used remarketing tools for South African businesses.
Effective remarketing campaigns segment audiences based on behaviour. A visitor who added products to their cart but didn't checkout deserves a different ad message and possibly a different offer than a visitor who only read your blog. Tailoring creative to where someone is in their buying journey dramatically improves campaign efficiency.
Why Remarketing Matters for Your Business
South African consumers, like their global counterparts, rarely purchase or enquire on their first website visit. Research suggests most B2C customers need between three and seven brand touchpoints before converting. Remarketing ensures your brand remains visible during that consideration period, rather than losing the customer to a competitor who stays top of mind.
The return on remarketing spend is consistently among the highest of any paid channel. Because you're targeting warm audiences who have demonstrated interest, cost per lead and cost per acquisition are typically 40% to 60% lower than equivalent prospecting campaigns targeting cold audiences.
How remarketing works
Remarketing shows ads to people who have already interacted with your business, most often past website visitors, so you reach an audience that already knows you rather than strangers. It works by tagging visitors, historically with a cookie, increasingly with first-party methods, so they can be grouped into audiences and served relevant ads as they browse other sites, apps or social platforms. Because these people have shown interest, remarketing typically converts better and costs less per result than prospecting to cold audiences, which is why it is a staple of performance campaigns. The art is relevance and restraint: reminding interested people usefully, without following them so relentlessly that it becomes irritating.
Building remarketing audiences
The power of remarketing lies in segmenting audiences by what people did, so the message fits their stage. You might build separate audiences for all site visitors, for people who viewed a specific product, for those who added to basket but did not buy, and for past customers, each warranting a different message. Cart abandoners might see the exact product with a reason to return; past customers might see complementary items. Segmenting this way, rather than showing everyone the same generic ad, is what makes remarketing efficient. As third-party cookies fade, building these audiences increasingly relies on first-party data and platform tools, which makes capturing your own audience data more important than before.
Remarketing across channels
Remarketing is not a single channel but a tactic that runs across many. Display remarketing shows banner ads to past visitors as they browse other websites. Search remarketing adjusts your search bids for people who have visited before, bidding more to win them back. Social remarketing reaches past visitors on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Video remarketing serves ads to people who engaged with your videos or channel, and email remarketing, such as abandoned-cart sequences, reaches people through their inbox. The strongest programmes coordinate these, so a person who browsed a product might see it again in a display banner, a social ad and a reminder email, with a consistent message meeting them wherever they spend time.
FAQ
What is the difference between remarketing and retargeting?
Remarketing and retargeting are often used interchangeably. Technically, retargeting refers to display ads served to previous website visitors, while remarketing traditionally referred to email-based re-engagement. Today, both terms describe the same strategy of reaching people who have already interacted with your brand.
How much does remarketing cost in South Africa?
Remarketing is very cost-effective in South Africa. Google Display remarketing CPMs range from R8 to R25, and Facebook remarketing CPMs from R15 to R40. CPCs are typically 40% to 60% lower than prospecting campaigns because the audience already recognises your brand.
What is dynamic remarketing?
Remarketing that shows people the specific products or services they viewed, rather than a generic ad. An ecommerce visitor who looked at a particular item sees that item in the ad, often with related products, which lifts relevance and conversion. It requires a product feed and the tracking to know what each person viewed.
Is there a limit to how long you can remarket to someone?
Platforms set maximum membership durations for remarketing audiences, and you can set shorter windows yourself. Beyond that, relevance fades: someone who browsed months ago is a weaker prospect, and over-long or over-frequent remarketing becomes intrusive, so tailoring the window to the buying cycle matters.