What Is the Difference Between Remarketing and Retargeting?

Remarketing and retargeting are two of the most effective tools in digital marketing, and they are also two of the most commonly confused. Both are about re-engaging people who have already shown interest in your business, but they do it in different ways and through different channels.

Understanding the distinction helps you plan campaigns more clearly and use each channel for the purpose it is best suited to. This guide explains what each term means, where the overlap lies, and how businesses typically use them together.

What retargeting means

Retargeting, in its most common usage, refers to showing paid display or social ads to people who have previously visited your website or interacted with your content. The mechanism is a small piece of tracking code — a pixel — placed on your site. When someone visits, the pixel fires and adds them to a custom audience. Your ads then follow that audience around the web, appearing on other websites, YouTube, or social media platforms.

The idea is simple: the vast majority of website visitors leave without converting. Retargeting gives you a second chance to bring them back. Because these audiences have already expressed interest, retargeted ads typically perform significantly better than cold-audience campaigns. Conversion rates are higher and cost per acquisition is lower.

Retargeting is primarily a paid advertising activity. You set a budget, define your audience segments — perhaps people who viewed a specific product page but did not add to cart — and pay for the impressions or clicks your ads generate.

What remarketing means

Remarketing is a broader term that originally referred specifically to Google’s product for re-engaging past visitors through the Google Display Network and Google Ads. Over time it has also come to describe re-engagement through other channels, most commonly email.

Email remarketing involves sending targeted messages to people who are already in your contact list but have not taken a desired action. Abandoned cart emails are a classic example: a customer adds items to their basket, leaves without buying, and receives an automated email a few hours later reminding them of what they left behind. This type of remarketing relies on having the person’s email address rather than a pixel.

In practice, many marketers use the two terms interchangeably, and the distinction matters less than understanding the underlying goal: bringing back people who are already warm to your brand. If someone asks you about your remarketing strategy, they almost certainly mean the combination of display retargeting and email re-engagement.

Combining both for maximum impact

The most effective approach uses both channels together. Display retargeting catches the people who visited but whose email address you do not have, keeping your brand visible as they browse elsewhere. Email remarketing reaches the people already in your database, often with more personalised and detailed messaging than a banner ad can convey.

Segment your audiences carefully. Someone who visited your pricing page but did not enquire is in a different mindset from someone who read a blog post. Someone who previously purchased from you is different again. Tailoring your retargeting creative and your remarketing emails to each segment dramatically improves results compared with sending the same message to everyone.