Facebook Ads

How effective is retargeting with Facebook ads really?


Odyssey Attribution

Facebook Ads

Retargeting is standard practice for online marketers, but is it really leading to new conversions?

Facebook is one of the most popular platforms for retargeting by online marketers, mainly because of its easy-to-use platform and broad audience that is active on Facebook products. The Facebook Ads Manager is a self-service, performance-based advertising platform that has a wide range of targeting features that are greatly improved when installing the Facebook pixel, with for example retargeting. When looking at the results of commonly practiced Facebook campaigns, a retargeting campaign is generally your best bet for the lowest cost per conversion campaign. Which makes perfect sense because you are reaching an audience that was already evaluating your products or services. So the question arises, are these retargeting campaigns justified? Were these customers not already in the process of buying your product?


facebook versus google transactions

How does Facebook determine its attributed conversions?

Facebook has its own platform for attribution, namely Facebook Attribution which runs on the Facebook pixel and offers the possibility to create impressions and click trackers destined for ads that run on other platforms for multi-channel attribution. Still, most marketers renounce Facebook attribution as a proper platform for attribution. Google remains the winner in the condition of the walled gardens the tech giants created. Within the Facebook ad manager, conversions can be measured with post-click and/or post-view attribution setting, with the 7-day post-click setting as most commonly practiced. Meaning that all conversions that happened after clicking on an ad within 7 days will be attributed to that specific ad that led to that click.

This approach can be very insightful for upper- to mid-funnel campaigns and will help you to pinpoint performance drivers. But this model is not ideal for judging retargeting ads. To analyze the value of retargeting campaigns, intelligence about the complete customer journey is required. So what can marketers do?


How can marketers determine the added value of their retargeting campaigns?

A well-equipped marketer counts for two. Your best weapon against misleading results provided by an advertising platform is adopting an attribution model for your business. It is important to understand that a customer journey is never completed by one sole touchpoint (ad, email, promotion, etc.), but it is always the result of a collaborative effort of all the touchpoints that reached the customer before conversion. Insight into what other channels and or ads affected the customer besides the retargeting ad will give an understanding of the value of your final retargeting phase.

Odyssey enables marketers to utulize multi-touch attribution to determine the value of different campaigns, for example retargeting campaigns. The following multi-touch attribution models can be applied in the Odyssey platform:

  • First Click Linear
  • Linear
  • Last Click Linear
  • U-Shaped
  • Custom model

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What happens when you run a multi-touch attribution model for Facebook retargeting?

Odyssey allows marketers to place the retargeting Facebook ad within a complete customer journey and will blast away the mist that surrounds the previous touchpoints of each conversion. Every channel or campaign (depending on the level of insight) is given a certain index by Odyssey based on its value in context to the complete customer journey, Odyssey calls this the Incrementality index..

Facebook retargeting generated revenue is almost always lower when looking at the Incrementality based revenue calculated by Odyssey, this can lead up to 70% less revenue in comparison to Google Analytics attributed revenue. When marketers understand the real revenue that is generated by their Facebook campaigns, marketers can make just decisions about their marketing budgets.


Curious about how to start with multi-touch attribution?

Simply connect Odyssey to your Google analytics and get your exciting multi-touch attribution insights instantly. Improve the Odyssey recommendations even further with an additional connection with Facebook, and receive razor-sharp budget recommendations based on the Incrementality. Don’t want to use a new platform? Odyssey’s attribution is also available in popular dashboard tools like Google Data Studio or Klipfolio etc. See more of this in our Destinations section.

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