Discover the differences between retargeting and remarketing. Learn best practices to maximize engagement and boost your campaign results effectively.
Perion Marketing
02nd Jun 2026
Retargeting and remarketing are essential strategies for reconnecting with potential customers, but they aren’t the same. While both aim to re-engage audiences who have already interacted with your brand, they differ in execution, platforms, and goals.
Retargeting focuses on using paid ads to target users based on online behavior, while remarketing typically involves email campaigns to nurture leads. Understanding the distinctions and knowing when to use each can significantly impact your campaign performance. This article explores their differences, benefits, and best practices to help you optimize your marketing strategies and achieve better results.
Key Highlights
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Retargeting focuses on re-engaging users based on their online behavior. This strategy works by tracking visitors to your website or app using cookies or pixels, enabling you to identify users who interacted with your content but didn’t convert. These users are then served tailored ads on platforms like display networks, search engines, or social media.
An example of a retargeting campaign could be the Nexon campaign by Perion. The company launched this campaign to promote its action RPG “Building and Fighter”, leveraging geo-location targeting and dynamic creative optimization. Different creative variations and custom audience segments, based on Nexon’s first-party data, targeted both new and existing users at optimal times.
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The campaign achieved 1.6 million impressions, identified peak engagement times, and demonstrated the effectiveness of data-driven audience targeting in modern outdoor advertising.
Remarketing relies on email campaigns to reconnect with leads. This method targets users who have already interacted with your brand, such as those who’ve signed up for a newsletter, downloaded a resource, or made a purchase. Through personalized email content, remarketing nurtures relationships and encourages further engagement.
This approach is particularly effective for upselling and cross-selling opportunities. For example, if a customer purchases a laptop, a marketing email can recommend accessories like cases or external drives.
Retargeting focuses on using paid ads to target users based on online behavior, while remarketing typically involves email campaigns to nurture leads. Though similar, these strategies differ in approach and execution.
Retargeting involves serving ads to users who have interacted with your website or app but haven’t converted. It primarily relies on cookies or pixel tracking to display ads on third-party websites, social media platforms, or search engines. This method targets a broader audience, including those who have shown interest but aren’t yet loyal customers.
Success is measured using metrics like ad impressions, click-through rates (CTR), and conversions. The costs of a retargeting campaign will depend on the provider and the industry.
Remarketing focuses on email campaigns to reconnect with existing leads or past customers. These emails might include exclusive offers, personalized recommendations, or reminders about abandoned carts.
Unlike retargeting, which casts a wider net, remarketing emphasizes nurturing relationships with a smaller, more defined audience. Marketers use metrics like email open rates, click rates, and purchase conversions to help evaluate their effectiveness. Email remarketing costs are generally lower.
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It is best to use remarketing to reconnect with an audience that already expressed a strong interest in your brand, products, or services. It’s particularly suitable for nurturing relationships with existing leads, past customers, or those who’ve interacted with your business, such as signing up for a newsletter or completing a purchase.
Some use cases for this strategy may include driving repeat sales, encouraging loyalty, or re-engaging dormant customers with personalized offers, updates, or reminders. For example, you can use remarketing to recommend complementary products or services. Remarketing works well when you leverage first-party data, such as email lists, to deliver highly targeted messages.
One of the most common uses for remarketing is cart abandonment recovery. You can send automated emails reminding customers of their unpurchased items, often accompanied by a discount or time-sensitive offer. This strategy helps close the sales loop and boosts customer retention.
Retargeting is most effective when you aim to convert users who have interacted with your website, app, or ads but haven’t yet taken a desired action, such as purchasing. This strategy is ideal for capturing the attention of visitors who left without converting, helping to keep your brand top-of-mind as they browse other sites.
Marketers use retargeting during the consideration phase of the customer journey, where users are weighing their options. For instance, if someone visits your product page but doesn’t complete a purchase, retargeting can display relevant ads across third-party sites, enticing them to return and complete their transaction.
Retargeting is used mostly to promote time-sensitive offers or limited-time deals to users who have shown interest in your brand and expand brand awareness. For example, an e-commerce brand could retarget visitors with flash sale ads featuring the products they previously viewed.
Combining retargeting and remarketing allows businesses to create a comprehensive and effective re-engagement strategy that addresses two different stages of the customer journey.
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Using the right metrics to track and optimize performance is critical for the success of both retargeting and remarketing campaigns. Still, different metrics are used for each method.
Retargeting relies on metrics such as click-through rates (CTRs), ad impressions, and conversions to measure engagement and effectiveness. Marketers monitor these metrics to help identify which ads resonate with your audience and where adjustments are needed to improve performance.
For remarketing, the indicators of a successful campaign include email open rates, click-through rates, and response rates. By monitoring these metrics, you can track how well your emails capture attention and drive user actions. Automated solutions can help create personalized campaigns and track results in real time.
Another practice that benefits both strategies is A/B testing. By testing ads or email content variations, you can determine what works best for your audience and refine your campaigns accordingly.
Increase Your Retargeting Campaign Effectiveness With Perion
Perion helps advertisers re-engage high-intent audiences with precision, combining AI-powered optimization, dynamic creative, and cross-channel execution under Perion One.
Outmax, Perion’s AI execution agent, automates campaign delivery in real time, continuously optimizing targeting and creative to reach the right audience at the right moment. Perion’s AI-powered solutions eliminate manual inefficiencies, ensuring retargeting spend drives measurable outcomes across display, video, CTV, and DOOH.
Key capabilities include dynamic creative optimization, cross-channel integration, real-time analytics, and AI-driven audience targeting, all built to convert intent into action.
Contact us today to see how Perion can elevate your retargeting strategy.
Both are effective but serve different purposes. Retargeting is ideal for increasing brand visibility and converting potential customers, while remarketing works best for nurturing existing leads and encouraging repeat purchases.
Yes, combining both strategies can create a more comprehensive customer journey. For example, you can use retargeting ads to bring users back to your site and follow up with remarketing emails to encourage conversions.
Yes, retargeting is highly effective because it targets users who have already shown interest in your brand, making them more likely to convert compared to audiences exposed to traditional, broad advertising.
Common tools for retargeting include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and programmatic ad platforms. For remarketing, platforms like Mailchimp, HubSpot, and Salesforce can help manage email campaigns.
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