The best retargeting platforms in 2026
Display, social, CTV and B2B retargeting, with the real minimum budgets.
A retargeting platform shows ads to people who visited your site and left without buying. Short answer: AdRoll to retarget across the web, CTV and social from one place, Google Ads for the widest reach and follow-up searches, Meta Ads for consumer brands, LinkedIn Ads for B2B.
We compared 17 platforms named in the top Google results for "retargeting platforms" and ranked 8, from walled gardens to independent DSPs and one managed service.
The ranking is editorial: a sponsored spot is always labeled on its entry, and no affiliate link changes a score.
The best retargeting platform for your case
Pay as you go, no minimum spend
Visitors who search againSearch, YouTube and Display
Consumer brandsFacebook and Instagram custom audiences
Big product catalogsDynamic product recommendations
B2B decision makersFrom $10 a day
No media buyer in-houseDedicated account manager
8 retargeting platforms compared
None of these platforms charges a license for retargeting on its own: you pay for the ads. The price column shows how you pay and the minimum budget each vendor publishes, in US dollars; the "Know before you start" column gives the rule or requirement that trips up a first campaign.
| Best for | Know before you start | Free plan | Team size | Visit | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AdRoll | Best independent retargeting platform | No minimum spend, CTV included | 4.5/5 | Pay as you go, no minimum spend | — | Visit → | |
| 2 | Google Ads | Best reach for display and YouTube retargeting | Can spend 2x the daily budget | 4.4/5 | Your own daily budget, billed per click or view | — | Visit → | |
| 3 | Meta Ads | Best for social retargeting | Daily budget 5x a cost goal | 4.3/5 | Your own budget: $25 a day for a $5 cost goal | — | Visit → | |
| 4 | Criteo | Best for large product catalogs | Needs a product feed and OneTag | 4.2/5 | Custom quote | — | Visit → | |
| 5 | StackAdapt | Best programmatic DSP for mid-market teams | Self-serve access after approval | 4.1/5 | Custom quote, no minimum spend | — | Visit → | |
| 6 | TikTok Ads | Best for retargeting younger shoppers | 1,000 matched users per audience | 3.7/5 | Campaign budget above $50 a day | — | Visit → | |
| 7 | LinkedIn Ads | Best for B2B retargeting | $100 lifetime minimum per campaign | 3.6/5 | From $10 a day per campaign | — | Visit → | |
| 8 | ReTargeter | Best managed retargeting service | An account manager runs it | 3.4/5 | Custom quote | — | Visit → |
Scores are ours, a weighted average of five criteria.
Is your tool missing from this page? Email us: hello@hackceleration.com
How we compared and scored
We started from the platforms the top Google results for "retargeting platforms" name in their headings, then read each vendor's pricing, budget and audience pages. Inventory reach weighs 30% because a retargeting audience is only worth what you can reach; audiences and dynamic ads weigh 25%; ease of setup, entry cost and measurement weigh 15% each.
We did not open ad accounts: every fact comes from the vendors' own pages, and buyer feedback from forums and review sites.
- Inventory reachSites, apps, social and TV where your audience can be shown ads.30%
- Audiences and dynamic adsPixel, CRM and list audiences, and product ads built from a feed.25%
- Ease of setupHow fast a small team gets a first campaign live.15%
- Entry costPublished minimums and whether you can start small.15%
- MeasurementAttribution, conversion tracking and incrementality.15%
No affiliate link changes a score or a rank.
AdRoll
AdRoll is one of the retargeting tools the top Google results name most often. You add its pixel, build segments from website and app visitors, ecommerce store signals or CRM lists, and its BidIQ engine buys placements across ad exchanges and connected TV, with social ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest as an add-on. On CTV, AdRoll claims access to over 200 million viewers. Dynamic ads show the products a shopper viewed.
The self-service Ads plan is pay-as-you-go: AdRoll has no minimum spend and charges dynamic CPM, so the cost per thousand impressions moves with demand. Managed services and the yearly Advanced Package (attribution, social ads and free ad credits included) go through sales.
- Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix and BigCommerce stores
- Connected TV retargeting
- Cross-channel attribution add-on
- ✓No minimum spend on self-service
- ✓Open web, CTV and social add-on in one place
- ✓Dynamic product ads
- ✗Social ads: an add-on, self-service only
- ✗Attribution is an add-on
- ✗CPM cost moves with demand
Pick AdRoll if your audience is too small to feed Google and Meta separately, or if you want one report across channels. Run it next to an attribution tool if you already have one, rather than paying twice.
Google Ads
Google calls retargeting "your data segments" now (the old "remarketing" lists). Website visitors, YouTube viewers, app users, lead-form submitters and Customer Match lists can all be targeted, and dynamic remarketing shows the products people viewed, built with free Ad gallery layouts, across more than 2 million websites and apps, and on follow-up searches.
Pricing runs through the auction with automated bidding: you set an average daily budget and pay per click or view. Google gives its own example: for $304 a month, set $10 a day. On a given day Google may spend up to twice that budget, while the month stays within 30.4 times it.
- Your data segments for Search ads
- Dynamic remarketing from a product feed
- Customer Match lists
- ✓Over 2 million sites and apps
- ✓Search, YouTube and Display from one tag
- ✓Free ad gallery layouts
- ✗Daily spend can reach twice the budget
- ✗Many campaign types to learn
- ✗Display placements need exclusions
Pick Google Ads first if people search for what you sell: retargeting a visitor on their next search reaches them when they are more likely to buy. Send them to a page built for returning visitors with one of our landing page builders.
Meta Ads
Meta retargets through custom audiences: you build them from your own data (pixel, customer lists, app events) or from engagement with your Facebook and Instagram content. Catalog audiences target people who interacted with items in your product catalog, and an exclusion-only list keeps past buyers out. Ads run on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the Audience Network.
You control spending through a budget and a bid strategy. Meta sets a minimum budget per campaign or ad set, and it depends on vertical, country, objective and bid strategy, so the exact floor appears in Ads Manager when you build the ad set.
- Custom audiences from pixel and lists
- Advantage+ campaign budget
- Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network
- ✓Huge consumer reach
- ✓Strong dynamic catalog ads
- ✓Ads Manager alerts you below the minimum
- ✗Minimums change by country and objective
- ✗Tracking depends on pixel and Conversions API
- ✗Daily budget at least 5x a cost goal
Pick Meta for consumer products and abandoned carts. Our abandoned cart recovery guide shows how ads fit next to email and SMS.
Criteo
Criteo built its name on dynamic retargeting: personalized display and video ads that recommend the items each shopper is most likely to buy next, using live prices and availability. Ads run across premium open-web publishers, social channels and in-app inventory, and its Commerce Growth platform adds acquisition on top.
GO campaigns let AI handle targeting, bidding and delivery, and the platform integrates with Google Analytics 4 for incrementality checks. Pricing is set with its sales team. To start, Criteo asks for a product feed (ID, title, price, image) and its OneTag to capture views, carts and purchases; it says most clients go live in days on its self-service platform, and a store without a feed can begin with responsive ads.
- Dynamic Creative Optimization+
- GO campaigns
- GA4 and incrementality measurement
- ✓Product recommendations in every ad
- ✓Retail and premium publisher inventory
- ✓Built for commerce data
- ✗Pricing through sales
- ✗Full dynamic ads need a feed and OneTag
- ✗Commerce-first, little for lead generation
Pick Criteo if you sell thousands of products and want the recommendation logic done for you. A small store can start sooner with AdRoll or Meta catalog ads, which need no sales contact.
StackAdapt
StackAdapt is a programmatic platform that a marketing team can run itself. Campaigns go out across connected TV, video, display, native, audio, digital out-of-home, email and direct mail, with first-party data and CRM audiences for retargeting.
StackAdapt has no minimum advertising spend. Access to the self-serve platform goes through an application and approval, and plans run from Basic (self-serve, Academy and support portal) to Enterprise. Cost depends on your budget, channels and support level. Basic is aimed at lean teams with programmatic experience, and its email automation suite is an add-on; Ivy Studio, its AI workspace, groups planning, forecasting and optimization.
- Five plans, Basic to Enterprise
- CRM integration and email automation suite
- Ivy Studio AI workspace
- ✓No minimum spend
- ✓Many channels from one platform
- ✓Self-serve or managed
- ✗Self-serve access needs approval
- ✗Fee depends on plan and support
- ✗Expects programmatic know-how
Pick StackAdapt when you outgrow AdRoll and want DSP control on a self-serve plan with no minimum spend. For account-based programs, compare it with our ABM platforms.
TikTok Ads
TikTok Ads Manager retargets through custom audiences built from a customer file, website traffic from the TikTok pixel, app activity, lead forms and engagement with your videos. A custom audience needs 1,000 matched users before an ad group can use it, a real hurdle for a small site.
TikTok publishes its minimums: a daily campaign budget must exceed $50 and an ad group budget must exceed $20. For a 31-day ad group on a lifetime budget, that means at least $620. You cannot switch between daily and lifetime budgets once a campaign is live, and TikTok advises raising a budget by no more than 40% at a time during the learning phase, 30% after it.
- Pixel and engagement audiences
- Daily or lifetime budgets
- Video-first formats
- ✓Customer file and pixel audiences
- ✓Creative-led formats
- ✓Published budget minimums
- ✗$50 daily campaign floor
- ✗Needs a steady flow of new videos
- ✗Weak for B2B
Pick TikTok when your products already sell through video. Keep the creative fresh with one of our ad creative tools.
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn retargets through Matched Audiences: website visitors from the Insight Tag, video viewers, lead-form openers and uploaded contact lists. You then filter by job title, seniority or company, and Company Targeting reaches the accounts on your ABM list.
Ads are sold through an auction with objective-based pricing. The minimum daily budget is $10 for any ad format, the minimum lifetime budget for a new campaign is $100, and LinkedIn suggests $25 a day for new advertisers. Once a campaign launches, its lifetime minimum becomes $10 times the number of scheduled days.
- Matched Audiences
- Job title and company filters
- Objective-based billing
- ✓Reaches the buying committee
- ✓Clear published minimums
- ✓Works with lead gen forms
- ✗Lifetime minimum: $10 per scheduled day
- ✗Small audiences deliver slowly
- ✗Default budget suggested above the floor
Pick LinkedIn if one deal pays for months of ads. Feed it the accounts your intent data provider flags, so you pay only for people who matter.
ReTargeter
ReTargeter, now part of Inuvo, is a managed service more than a self-serve tool. Each advertiser gets a dedicated account manager, presented as an extension of your marketing team, who builds and optimizes the display campaigns, for B2B, direct-to-consumer brands and agencies. ReTargeter says it monitors every impression for bot traffic, filters the content around each ad in real time for brand safety, and tells you where your ads serve.
It offers vCPM pricing, where you pay only for impressions viewable under IAB standards. Pricing is set with its team through a form.
- Dedicated account manager
- vCPM pricing on request
- Brand safety filtering
- ✓Hands-off for your team
- ✓Pay for viewable impressions
- ✓Agency-friendly
- ✗Custom quote
- ✗Built around display campaigns
- ✗Less control than a self-serve platform
Pick ReTargeter if nobody on your team has time to run campaigns. If you have that person, AdRoll or StackAdapt give you more control for your money.
Platforms we compared but did not rank
Names you will meet in other lists, and why they are not in ours.
- The Trade DeskA full demand-side platform with a self-serve interface, built for brands and agencies; access starts with a contact form, so it suits agencies and large in-house teams more than a first retargeting program.Cited
- AdRoll ABM (ex RollWorks)The RollWorks pricing page now leads to AdRoll ABM: the same company's account-based product, for B2B teams that retarget target accounts.Cited
- Perfect AudienceA long-standing self-serve retargeting tool, still named in older lists; its website no longer answers in 2026, so it is not a safe pick for a new program.Cited
- OutbrainNative ads on publisher sites, used to retarget readers of your content more than shoppers.Cited
- X AdsWebsite audiences on X work, but the reach is narrower than Meta for most brands.Cited
- MailBack by PostalyticsDirect mail retargeting: a postcard to identified visitors, a different channel from ads.Cited
- HubSpotSyncs CRM lists to ad networks; the ads still run on Google, Meta and LinkedIn.Cited
How to pick your retargeting platform
Start from your audience size and where your buyers spend time, not from the feature list.
You run an online store
Start with Meta and Google dynamic product ads, then add AdRoll or Criteo when the catalog and traffic grow. Pair ads with email for carts, as in our abandoned cart guide.
You sell to businesses
LinkedIn for roles, Google for follow-up searches, then StackAdapt or AdRoll ABM for the open web. Our ABM platform ranking covers account-level programs.
Your traffic is small
Under a few thousand visitors a month, a single network fills its audience faster than five. TikTok needs 1,000 matched users before a custom audience can run, so a small visitor list may not qualify there at all. Grow the list with customer uploads, and measure with an attribution tool before adding channels.
Nobody can run campaigns
A managed service like ReTargeter, or AdRoll's managed plan with qualifying spend, saves the hours. Ask who owns creative refreshes before you sign.
- Install pixels through a consent tool first.
- Exclude people who already bought.
- Split audiences by recency.
- Set a frequency cap.
- Plan new creative every few weeks.
- Compare results with a holdout group before scaling.
Get more from retargeting for less
Small moves from vendor help pages and buyer forums.
Respect Meta's 5x rule
With a cost per result goal, Meta asks for a daily budget of at least five times the goal: a $5 goal needs $25 a day. Below that, the ad set risks under-delivery.
Expect Google to spend double some days
Google can spend up to twice your average daily budget on a busy day and balances it over the month. Set the daily budget from your monthly ceiling, not the other way round.
Start LinkedIn at the floor
LinkedIn's minimum is $10 a day, while it suggests $25 for new advertisers. A retargeting audience is small, so the floor often spends everything it can buy.
Budget TikTok by the ad group
An ad group needs more than $20 a day. On a lifetime budget the floor is the number of days times $20: $620 for a 31-day ad group.
Retarget on Search, not only banners
Google's data segments for Search ads let you bid higher when a past visitor searches again. Google pitches it for people who are more likely to make a purchase.
Ask StackAdapt for approval early
StackAdapt's self-serve platform needs an application before you can launch. Apply a few days before the campaign you plan.
Fill the pixel with fresh creative
Retargeting audiences see the same ads many times. Rotate visuals with an AI ad generator and cap frequency.
Collect consent before the pixel fires
For European visitors, a pixel that fires without consent is a legal risk and a lost audience. Choose from our consent management ranking.
Retargeting platforms · FAQ
What is a retargeting platform?
It is the software that shows ads to people who already visited your site, opened your app or sit in your customer list. Walled gardens (Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok) retarget inside their own properties; independent platforms (AdRoll, Criteo, StackAdapt) buy placements across many sites, apps and connected TV.What is the difference between retargeting and remarketing?
In practice, none for ads: Google used "remarketing" for the same feature it now calls "your data segments". Some marketers keep "remarketing" for email follow-ups to known contacts and "retargeting" for ads to anonymous visitors.How much does retargeting cost?
You pay for media, not a license. LinkedIn starts at $10 a day per campaign, a TikTok campaign needs more than $50 a day, AdRoll and StackAdapt state no minimum spend, and Criteo and ReTargeter quote on demand. Google and Meta let you set your own budget, with Meta minimums set by country and objective.Does retargeting still work without third-party cookies?
Yes, if you rely on your own data. Customer lists (Google Customer Match, LinkedIn Matched Audiences, Meta custom audiences), logged-in walled gardens and server-side tracking keep audiences alive when browsers block third-party cookies.Which retargeting platform is best for B2B?
LinkedIn Ads for reaching specific roles, then StackAdapt or AdRoll ABM to follow the same accounts across the open web. Small B2B audiences fill slowly, so add contact lists from your CRM to the website audience.How long should a retargeting window be?
Match it to your sales cycle: a few days for a cart, several weeks for software with a demo. Split audiences by recency (for example 1 to 7 days and 8 to 30 days) and bid more on the freshest group.Can I retarget the same person across devices?
Yes, when the platform knows who they are. Google says your data segments reach people across their devices as they browse over 2 million websites and apps, and Customer Match lists show ads to signed-in users across Google products. AdRoll also re-engages website visitors and CRM contacts on their connected TV.How do I stop retargeting ads from annoying people?
Cap frequency, exclude buyers, and rotate creative. Exclude anyone who converted, and stop showing the same ad after a few views a day; Criteo lists frequency capping among its campaign controls, so look for the same setting on each platform you use.Do I need a consent banner to run retargeting?
In Europe and the UK, yes: retargeting pixels set cookies or similar identifiers that need consent. Pick a consent tool that passes signals to Google and Meta; we compare them in our consent management ranking.