{"id":6960,"date":"2026-10-20T21:52:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T14:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adtek.agency\/glossary\/retargeting\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T21:52:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T14:52:15","slug":"retargeting","status":"publish","type":"mona_glossary","link":"https:\/\/adtek.agency\/en\/glossary\/retargeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Retargeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Retargeting is the practice of showing ads to people who have already interacted with a business: they visited the website, opened the app, watched a video, messaged the Facebook page or are on the customer list. Vietnamese media buyers often call it “ch\u1ea1y l\u1ea1i t\u1ec7p”, literally “running the audience again”.<\/p>\n

What is retargeting?<\/h2>\n

Instead of finding new people by age or interests, retargeting uses traces you collected yourself: a pixel or tag on your website, an SDK in your app, engagement on the ad platform itself, and the email addresses and phone numbers customers gave you. All of these count as first-party data<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Meta, these audiences are called custom audiences. They can be built from your website (through the Meta Pixel), your app, your product catalog, a customer list, or people who watched a video, opened a lead form or engaged with your page on Facebook, Instagram or Threads. Each ad account can create up to 500 custom audiences (Meta Business Help Center, About custom audiences, accessed October 2026<\/a>). Website visitors stay in an audience for anywhere from 1 to 180 days, depending on what you set (Meta for Developers, Website Custom Audiences, accessed October 2026<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Google Ads has replaced the word “remarketing” in its interface with “your data”. This group covers website visitors, app users, YouTube channel viewers, Customer Match lists and people who submitted a lead form (Google Ads Help, About your data segments, accessed October 2026<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Retargeting vs remarketing<\/h2>\n

In paid advertising, the two words are used almost interchangeably. The difference is in which channels people tend to attach each word to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/th>\nRetargeting<\/th>\nRemarketing<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Channels usually associated with the term<\/td>\nAds on Meta, TikTok and display networks<\/td>\nEmail, SMS, Zalo OA (business accounts on Vietnam’s Zalo messaging app), and the old name of the feature in Google Ads<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Main data source<\/td>\nPixel, SDK, on-platform engagement<\/td>\nContact lists customers provided<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

For apps, bringing lapsed users back has its own name: re-engagement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Changes in 2025 and 2026 to know about<\/h2>\n