Most people who visit a service website leave without calling or filling in a form. Not because they are uninterested, but because they are comparing, busy or not quite ready. A week later, many of them have forgotten your name.
Retargeting shows those visitors your ads again as they browse elsewhere. Done well, it is a helpful reminder. Done badly, it is the pair of shoes that follows someone around for a month. Here is how to stay on the right side of that line.
How retargeting works
A small piece of tracking code on your website, from Google or Meta, records visits from people who have agreed to it. You can then create audiences, such as everyone who viewed a service page in the last 30 days, and show them ads on YouTube, Google’s partner sites, Facebook and Instagram.
You can also build audiences from people who watched your videos, engaged with your social profiles or, with proper consent, customer email lists.
Build audiences by intent
| Audience | What they did | What to show |
|---|---|---|
| Visited any page | Browsed briefly | Who you are and your main promise |
| Viewed a service page | Showed real interest | Reviews and results for that service |
| Viewed prices or started a form | Close to deciding | A reason to act now, such as availability |
| Became a customer | Already bought | Nothing, or a relevant next service later |
The deeper someone went, the more specific and direct your message can be.
Time windows and frequency
Match the window to how long people take to decide. For urgent services such as emergency repairs, a week or two is plenty; after that the job is done. For kitchens, legal services or B2B purchases, 60 to 90 days makes more sense.
Cap how often the same person sees your ads, and remove people from retargeting once they get in touch. Nothing annoys a new customer like ads for the thing they just bought.
What to say the second time
Showing the same ad again rarely works. The person already saw it and did not act. Use the second contact to answer what probably stopped them: a review from a similar customer, a short video of the process, a price range, a guarantee or an honest note about availability this month.
A good retargeting ad answers the question the visitor left with.
Privacy rules in Canada
Under PIPEDA, people should know that you use tracking for advertising, and your privacy policy should say so clearly with a way to opt out. In Quebec, Law 25 expects consent before tracking technologies are switched on, so a proper consent banner matters. CASL governs email rather than display ads, but any customer list you upload should have been collected with appropriate consent.
Measuring whether it works
Retargeting often gets too much credit, because the people it reaches were already interested. Look at conversions from clicks rather than views alone, and if the budget is significant, test it: exclude a random share of the audience for a month and compare. If you would like it set up properly, our Google and Meta Ads team builds retargeting as part of every account.
