Definition
Retargeting (also remarketing) is advertising shown specifically to people who have already interacted with a brand — visited the site, viewed a product, started a registration, or installed an app but not deposited. It uses a pixel, an SDK or a customer list to build audiences of these users and serves them tailored ads across display, social, video and native inventory to bring them back to complete an action.
Retargeting audiences convert at much higher rates than cold prospecting because the user already knows the brand and showed intent, so cost per action is usually low. The flip side is scale: the audience is only as large as prior traffic, so retargeting amplifies other channels rather than driving growth on its own, and it can be over-credited — some of those users would have returned anyway, so incrementality testing matters.
In context
For iGaming operators in regulated markets, retargeting is a standard part of the funnel: bringing back registrants who did not deposit, users who abandoned a deposit at the payment step, and lapsed players for reactivation. Segments are built by stage and value, frequency is capped to avoid annoyance, and messaging is matched to where the user dropped (a payment reminder for a checkout abandoner, a bonus for a non-depositing registrant).
Compliance still applies — retargeting must respect the same age, market and responsible-gambling rules, and must honour self-exclusion and consent withdrawal, so a self-excluded or opted-out user must be removed from all retargeting audiences.
Privacy changes have weakened retargeting. Third-party cookie deprecation shrinks web retargeting pools, App Tracking Transparency limits app retargeting on iOS, and consent requirements reduce eligible audiences.
Operators respond by leaning on first-party data (their own logged-in users, email-matched audiences) and on-site personalisation rather than third-party pixel pools. For affiliates, retargeting is mostly the operator's domain, but a content affiliate with its own consented pixel can retarget its site visitors toward a review or comparison page — within the same advertising rules — as a way to lift conversion of its existing traffic.
Worked example
An operator retargets deposit-page abandoners with a payment-method reminder and a small bonus, capped at three impressions over 48 hours. The segment converts at 14% versus a 2% cold-prospecting rate.
An incrementality holdout shows about a third would have returned anyway, so the true incremental cost per FTD is adjusted upward but still well below prospecting.
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