Retargeting isn't a strategy, it's a symptom

Retargeting campaigns almost always show the best on-platform metrics in an account: cheap, high-converting, easy to defend in a report. That's exactly why they're dangerous to lean on: those numbers are partly measuring people who were already going to convert.

When an account's blended performance depends heavily on retargeting, it's usually compensating for weak prospecting: an audience that isn't being reached well enough, or creative that isn't earning enough attention on the first exposure to need a second one.

The audit tell is a pool size problem: a retargeting audience too small to sustain frequency without fatigue, quietly propping up blended CAC while the prospecting campaigns underneath it are actually losing money. Separate the reporting and the story usually changes.

Healthy retargeting is a top-up on a prospecting engine that's already working, not the engine itself. If retargeting is doing the heavy lifting, the real fix is upstream, not in the retargeting campaign.