Remarketing vs Retargeting
Which one amongst remarketing & retargeting is the most effective & which one should you choose? And why?
It’s 2025 & there’s a high likelihood that everyone may have stumbled upon the term “E-mail is KING!” & FWIW it could be just about right given how businesses ought to keep looking to continuously acquire new users over existing / new segments. Check your inbox & it is more likely that an e-mail from a brand that you owned / showed interest in the past may have surfaced again, although the likelihood of the content being any different could be proportional to the rate of product innovation at the org.
Think about it. One could come across the advert for an Air conditioner all year long. But, the real pinch for it is felt in steamy hot weather conditions, the summers. And no wonder, some of those adverts (either the very same ones / freshly made ones) from the AC manufacturers strategically seem to resurface online during the summers.
If you look closely those two experiences described there look strikingly similar & yet are subtly different. When one of them is more direct the other one could be perceived as indirect hinging largely on third-party channels to push content, although the end result could ultimately coincide to affecting conversions .
Definition:
“Although used interchangeably given a somewhat common goal, RETARGETING relies on third-party medium like social channels / relevant websites to place Ads when REMARKETING directly reaches out to the incumbent user / user-to-be”
Here are a few similarities / differences between the two:
“Although the immediate goal of marketing is to drag a lot of eyeballs, one ought to take cognizance & NEVER lose sight of the end goal, that is – to bump up conversions, ensuring significant revenue additions”
Remarketing could be of many types depending on the medium / channel used to reach out to the audience & some popular ones are:
1. Display Remarketing
A common type of remarketing that involves fronting users-to-be with relevant content by building specific campaigns via responsive display Ads towards helping the org. win the users back.
2. Dynamic Remarketing
A more refined way that chooses to win back the interest by displaying Ads featuring specific products or services that may have proven to resonate with the users / users-to-be.
3. Video Remarketing
This typically targets those users who may have viewed the videos of the product on the org.’s website or through other channels that have a dedicated video feed like say, YouTube & fronts them with specific Ads
4. Social Media Remarketing
More common in today’s social media era where the users who may have interacted with content pertaining to the product / service on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn are chosen & fronted with Ads.
5. Search Engine Remarketing
This involves fronting those people who have shown interest in a product / service while browsing results on the search engine with Ads. Needless to say, that the underlying algorithm employed here would be SERP (Search Engine Results Page) & of course Page Ranks.
And now, to the all-important question:
→ Which one of these 2 should you employ? And why?
Although the table (comparison) clearly shows that the REMARKETING could prove to be more effective of the two, there are a few caveats to it. The mistake many commit is to try & pick one over the other given how there may not be much to choose between the purposes they are being employed for. But if you look at it from one-level deeper, you’d realize how they are targeting different stages of the user journey over that conversion funnel.
When RETARGETING earmarks & chooses to display content pertaining to those a cross-section of a sample space of prospects / aspects, REMARKETING is about pushing that small snippet of a video or a text message carrying a highly specific offer that could remove any possible doubt / confusion from the minds of customers-to-be & enable that BUY decision / any other response that’s relevant to & in favor of the org.
CASE STUDY 1: Real Estate org. employing REMARKETING to help finalize a booking
It is very common how many think of & prioritize investment into properties / real estate, especially in urban jungles. And given how everything minor to major is available online, the propensity of one hitting those channels to gather information, learn & equip oneself with all the data towards deciding is somewhat a natural.
Assume one came across an Ad from Total Environment (a real estate firm in India) & showed interest but didn’t finalize anything.
For someone who has seen a 2-3-minute Ad that showcases each & every element of the living space both from internal & external quarters, it needn’t take much to go ahead & finalize the site visit ultimately leading to a booking.
Supposing the incumbent keyed in their personal details & signed up. It is possible they could still be indecisive about a number of other factors that pertain to the physical space, which of course demands a visit without which the doubts could influence them to drop-off.
The org. could then resort to any / a few of these routes to evoke a decision in favor:
NOTE: It is probable that the org. may have to resort to some degree of repetition before they can eventually evoke a favorable response.
CASE STUDY 2: Flight Ticketing App using RETARGETING to enable an app download
YouTube choosing to interrupt the flow over someone watching a really long video (say, a movie, or an hour-long concert) with a short Advert isn’t new at all. One can hardly think of anyone who hasn’t experienced this phenomenon. Often times coming across as a total & unwanted disturbance, perceived as perturbing the natural flow of the video, there could be instances where it could come across as appealing to some given their needs / wants.
Assume one is fronted with an Ad from ClearTrip which intern talks of an App-only Offer.
What’s next? It ought to be categorization of course!
One tends to watch the Ad in full or up to a certain point that one deems relevant. That STAT adds up & is factored into the analytics so as to help bucket people based on their interests. It is possible that bucketing could use some severely complex logic that combines demographic data as apportioned across persona or even be as plain & simple as depicted here:
So, based on the categorization above the sample space could get bucketed & be fronted with the same one / other similar Ad campaigns towards mooting a favorable decision. The ultimate goal here is to get one to download the App & sign-up. So, fronting the audience with the relevant Ads from time to time over the same or any other channel like say, Facebook or when one is browsing something online could augur well for ClearTrip here.
NOTE: The relevance of the Ad here is worth its weight in Gold. For someone who has been booking flights sporadically based on need or even a frequent flier, the offer “SAVE 2,500” could appeal a lot given the total cost of one single air ticket.
REMEMBER:
Retargeting & Remarketing could both prove to be totally effective if employed well. And no, although most people use both those terms interchangeably, they bear a subtle difference as they focus on different areas of the funnel, although there could be a common end-goal / purpose.