Retargeting
In practice, for a UK buyer
The paragraph above is the neutral answer. This is the part a vendor glossary leaves out.
The channel where attribution flatters itself most, because retargeting reaches people who were already going to convert. It usually looks like the best-performing line in a plan and is usually the one most in need of an incrementality test. A geo-lift or holdout design is the only reliable way to find out how much of it was incremental.
What this one connects to
Most confusion in media buying comes from two adjacent terms being used interchangeably, so these are the neighbours worth reading next.
Incrementality
The share of an outcome that happened because of the advertising, measured against what would have happened anyway. Measured by comparing an exposed group with a comparable unexposed one, not by counting conversions that followed an advert.
Attribution
Assigning credit for an outcome to the advertising touchpoints that preceded it, according to a rule the advertiser chose. A description of correlation in a conversion path, not a demonstration that the advertising caused anything.
Holdout
A group deliberately excluded from seeing a campaign and kept as a comparison against the group that was exposed to it. Without one, the counterfactual — what would have happened anyway — has to be assumed rather than observed.
Last-click attribution
An attribution rule that gives all the credit for an outcome to the final advertising touchpoint before it, and none to the rest. Simple, universally available, and systematically biased towards whichever channel sits closest to the conversion.
More on targeting and identity
How an audience is described to a seller, and how much of the description survives. Most of the honest difficulty in media buying lives here.
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live. You describe one audience and watch it compile into seven targeting specifications, each with the score for how much of the definition survived.
Talk it through