Prospecting

Prospecting is the default audience type. A prospecting campaign targets users who have never engaged with your brand — they are new potential customers. Prospecting is how you grow your audience. No pixel is required.

Retargeting

A retargeting campaign exclusively targets past visitors to your website — people who have already shown interest by visiting but have not yet converted. Retargeting typically delivers higher conversion rates than prospecting because the audience is warm. Retargeting requires a retargeting pixel installed on your site before the campaign can build an audience.

How to Choose

Use both together for the strongest results: prospecting to continuously bring new visitors to your site, and retargeting to bring those visitors back to convert. The Tracking & Retargeting category has everything you need to get started with retargeting.

Common Mistakes

1. 1Launching a retargeting campaign before the pixel has built an audience — a retargeting pixel needs time and site traffic to accumulate a usable audience. If your site is new or low-traffic, launching a retargeting campaign immediately after installing the pixel will result in very low or zero delivery because there's no audience to serve to yet. Let the pixel run for at least a few weeks before activating retargeting.
2. 2Running retargeting as your only campaign with no active prospecting — retargeting audiences are fed by prospecting traffic. If you stop running prospecting campaigns, no new visitors enter your retargeting pool, and the pool shrinks over time as the attribution window rolls forward. Always keep at least one prospecting campaign active alongside retargeting.
3. 3Expecting retargeting to reach all past site visitors immediately — only users who visited after the retargeting pixel was installed are in the audience. Visitors from before the pixel was active are not included.