Prospecting vs retargeting

Cold reach (prospecting) and warm follow-up (retargeting) are different jobs on different scorecards. Two buckets in Ads Manager, a 70/30 starting split, and don't let blended ROAS fool you.

Every paid channel splits into two jobs: reaching people who've never heard of you (prospecting) and following up with people who have (retargeting). Confuse the two, or fund only one, and you either starve growth or burn cash on cold clicks that never convert.

Prospecting is cold outreach: new audiences, lookalikes, broad targeting, people who don't know your brand yet. Retargeting is warm follow-up: site visitors, cart abandoners, past customers, email/SMS subscribers, people who've already shown intent. They don't compete for the same job.

Prospecting builds the top of the funnel (expensive, lower ROAS, because you're paying to introduce yourself). Retargeting harvests the bottom (cheap, high ROAS, because the buyer already decided you're worth considering). But it can only re-reach people prospecting already found, so alone it plateaus.

In this lesson

Fastest path: one prompt, end to end
Or do it in 5 steps
Worked example: why blended ROAS misleads (illustrative math)

What you'll learn

Build two buckets in Ads Manager
Start at ~70/30, prospecting-heavy
Segment retargeting by intent
Set frequency caps and exclusions
Judge each bucket on its own metric