Retargeting used to be the holy grail of Facebook and Instagram advertising. If someone landed on your site, watched a video, or clicked an ad, you’d follow them around online with tailored ads — until they either bought from you or blocked you (let’s be honest, right?).
But Meta’s algorithm has evolved — a lot. Today, the smartest advertisers are shifting more of their budget toward broad, algorithmic targeting, and only using retargeting in specific scenarios.
So, should you still be investing in retargeting ads? The short answer: sometimes. But not as often as you might think.
We’ve been hearing this question a lot from clients, so let’s break down:
🎯 When retargeting still makes sense
🎯 When Meta’s algorithm can do the heavy lifting
🎯 And how to avoid the biggest mistake most brands make with retargeting
We’ll also nod to insights from Facebook ads expert Jon Loomer, who has run millions in Meta ad spend and has some key data that backs this up.
Why You Don’t Always Need to Retarget Anymore
Here’s the thing: Meta’s Advantage+ Audience and broad targeting have become incredibly smart. They automatically prioritise people most likely to convert — including folks who have already:
🎯 Visited your website
🎯 Engaged with your ads
🎯 Are on your email list
So if you’re running purchase-conversion campaigns using Meta’s newer audience tools, your existing warm audience is already being shown your ads.
Jon’s testing shows that 25–45% of budget spent via algorithmic targeting still goes to people in your remarketing pools — without having to create separate ad sets.
Translation?
👉 You may be wasting time and money building complex retargeting campaigns that Meta is already handling for you — better and cheaper.
When Retargeting Still Makes Sense
That said, there are a few strategic times when retargeting can give your campaign an extra lift — especially if you’re a service-based business, high-ticket offer, or operating on a lean budget.
Here are the three situations we recommend it:
1. A Specific Message for a Specific Audience
Say you’re offering a special discount to people who started booking a consultation but didn’t finish, or you want to upsell a premium service to past clients only. That’s a perfect time for a targeted retargeting ad.
💡 Example: For one of our legal clients, we ran a campaign offering a free downloadable guide only to visitors who had spent more than 3 minutes on their service page. The result? 40% higher download rate, with a cost per lead 30% lower than their broad targeting campaigns.
2. Low Budget, High-Stakes Offer
If you’ve only got $50/day to promote a $1,000+ service, remarketing to people already familiar with you can help stretch your budget. You’re playing a short game here — but sometimes you need those wins while building your broader audience.
3. Top-of-Funnel Engagement Control
Meta loves to optimize for cheap engagement — which can backfire. If you’re running video views or link click campaigns, the algorithm may go after low-quality users who won’t convert.
Want to make sure your content reaches people who are actually interested? Create a retargeting audience from people who’ve engaged deeply with your site or content in the past.
What NOT to Do: “Soft Retargeting” Loops
We see this mistake a lot: running a link-click or video view ad, then retargeting the people who clicked or viewed.
Here’s the problem: Meta finds the cheapest people to take that action — and they’re often not high-intent. So your retargeting audience ends up being low-quality, and your ROAS suffers.
✅ Instead: Build your retargeting lists off of real intent signals — like people who visited specific pages, spent time on your site, or already purchased.
Bottom Line
Retargeting isn’t dead. But it’s no longer the default go-to strategy. Meta’s algorithm does a lot of the work for you — and in many cases, better than we can manually.
Use remarketing strategically, not automatically:
🎯 For specific messages to specific people
💸 When working with a limited budget
📈 When optimizing content for high-affinity users
And let Meta handle the rest through Advantage+ and broad targeting — especially for scaling new client acquisition.
Want Help Auditing Your Current Ad Strategy?
If you’re unsure whether your retargeting setup is helping or hurting, we can take a look.
👋 Book a quick strategy call with us here and we’ll walk you through a high-performance setup — no fluff, no wasted ad spend.
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