Solved: Retargeting Ads Frequency for Low Ticket Items

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some of my thoughts on your retargeting question. It’s a common one, but I think looking at frequency is probably looking at the wrong part of the puzzle.

You're asking about the ideal daily frequency for your retargeting ads, and you feel that 1.65 is too low. It's a fair question, but honestly, focusing on frequency is a bit of a red herring. It's one of those metrics that looks important, but it's actually a symptom of other things, not a lever you should be trying to pull directly. It’s a bit like staring at the speedometer to try and make the car go faster, instead of pressing the accelerator. You don't really control frequency; its an output determined by your budget, the size of your audience, and how Meta's algorithm decides to serve your ads. A high frequency to the wrong people is just a fast track to annoying them and wasting your money. A low frequency to the right people can still be incredibly profitable. The real issue, and where you can make a massive difference, isn't the number of times people see your ad, but who is seeing it in the first place, and what you're showing them.

From what you've said, the core of the problem is probably your choice of retargeting audience. Let's get into that.

We'll need to look at who you're actually retargeting...

You mentioned you're retargeting 25% video viewers. On the surface, that sounds logical. Someone watched a quarter of your video, so they must be interested, right? Well, maybe. But its a very weak signal of intent. Think about how people use social media. They're scrolling quickly, videos autoplay, they might watch a few seconds while waiting for a bus or before getting interrupted. Watching a bit of a video is a very top-of-funnel (ToFu) action. It's passive. It requires almost no commitment from the user. Because of this, it's probably the weakest audience you could choose for a retargeting campaign that you expect to drive immediate sales.

You're trying to get a sale from someone who has only shown the slightest glimmer of interest. That's a hard sell, especially for a new store. You're essentially asking for marriage on the first date. For a £30-£40 product, you need to be speaking to people who are much, much closer to making a purchase decision. This is where a proper funnel structure comes in. Most people just lump "retargeting" into one bucket, but it's much more nuanced than that. You have to treat people differently based on how much intent they've shown. I'd break it down into a clear priority list.

Your current audience (video viewers) sits at the very top of the funnel, the furthest away from a sale. The real money in retargeting is made at the bottom of the funnel (BoFu). These are the people who have all but screamed "I want to buy your stuff!". They've taken active steps that show clear buying intent. These are the people you should be focusing your retargeting budget on first and foremost.

Here’s how I would prioritise audiences for an ecommerce store like yours, from most valuable to least valuable:

So, you can see your 25% video viewers are right at the bottom of the pile in terms of purchase intent. By focusing on them, you're making your job incredibly difficult. The frequency of 1.65 is probably low because the audience is massive, and your budget is being spread very thinly across a lot of people who just aren't that interested. If you were to create a seperate ad set targeting just your 'Added to Cart' audience from the last 7 days, you'd find the audience is much smaller, and your frequency would naturally be much higher. And that would be a good thing, because you want to stay top-of-mind for those super-hot prospects.

I'd say you need to focus on the right numbers...

This brings me to my next point. Forget frequency. For an ecommerce business, especially with a low AOV of £30-£40, there are only two metrics that truly matter: CPA (Cost Per Acquisition/Purchase) and ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). That's it. Everything else is just noise. Who cares if your frequency is 1 or 10 if you're not making profitable sales?

Your goal should be to acquire a customer for a cost that is significantly lower than the value they bring to your business. This is where understanding your numbers is definately going to help. You know your AOV is £30-£40. The next question is, what's your profit margin on that? Let's say, after the cost of goods, packaging, etc., you have a 60% gross margin. On a £35 sale, that's £21 in gross profit.

Now, a healthy business model aims for at least a 3:1 ratio of customer value to acquisition cost. So, with £21 of profit, you can afford to spend up to £7 to acquire that customer and still have a healthy, scalable business. Your entire focus on Meta Ads should be: "How can I get my CPA below £7?". That is your North Star metric. Not frequency, not CPC, not CTR.

ROAS is just another way of looking at this. It's simply the total revenue generated from your ads divided by your ad spend. A ROAS of 3x means for every £1 you spend, you get £3 back in revenue. Given your margins, a 3x ROAS would be profitable. A 2x ROAS would likely be losing you money once you factor in product costs. I've worked on plenty of ecom campaigns where we've driven incredible returns by focusing single-mindedly on ROAS. For one subscription box client, we hit a 1000% ROAS (a 10x return) on Meta Ads. For another selling women's apparel, we acheived a 691% return. This was possible because we ignored vanity metrics and built the entire campaign structure around driving profitable sales by targeting the right people.

This kind of thinking frees you from worrying about small details. If your CPA is £5 and your ROAS is 5x, does it matter if your frequency is 1.65? Not at all. You're printing money. If your CPA is £30 and your ROAS is 1.2x, does it matter if you "fix" your frequency to 3.0? No, you're just losing money twice as fast. You need to get the fundamentals of your targeting and measurement right first.

You'll need to create ads for each stage of the funnel...

Once you've got your new, tiered audience structure, you can't just show them all the same ad. A person who abandoned their cart needs a very different message than someone who just watched a video. This is another common mistake I see. People create one ad and spray it at everyone.

Your ad creative and copy needs to match the audience's temperature.

For your BoFu Audience (e.g., Added to Cart - last 7 days): These people are hot. They know who you are and they liked a product enough to add it to the cart. Your ad needs to be a direct nudge to get them over the line.
-> Message: Urgency and overcoming objections.
-> Example Copy: "Still thinking about it? Your basket is waiting! Complete your order now before it sells out."
-> Offer: You could test a small, time-sensitive discount. "Use code COMEBACK10 for 10% off for the next 24 hours." This can be incredibly effective.
-> Creative: A simple image or carousel ad showing the exact product(s) they left in their cart. Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) are perfect for this.

For your MoFu Audience (e.g., Product Page Viewers - last 30 days): These people are warm. They're interested but need more convincing. They might be comparing you to competitors or are unsure about quality or trust.
-> Message: Build trust and showcase value.
-> Example Copy: "See why customers are loving the [Product Name]. Handcrafted with care and designed to last. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'I use it every day!'"
-> Creative: Show customer testimonials, user-generated content (UGC), reviews, or a video of the product in use, highlighting its benefits. Social proof is your best friend here.

For your ToFu Audience (e.g., Video Viewers - last 90 days): These people are cold. They barely know you. A direct "buy now" message will likely fail. You need to re-introduce your brand and draw them in further.
-> Message: Tell your story and educate.
-> Example Copy: "Did you know all our products are [unique selling point, e.g., handmade in Scotland / made from recycled materials]? Discover the story behind our brand."
-> Creative: A different video, perhaps a brand story, a 'behind the scenes', or a video that showcases your range of products rather than just one. The goal here isn't an immediate sale, but to move them down the funnel to become a website visitor or product page viewer.

By tailoring your message like this, each ad feels more relevant and is much more likely to work. This systematic approach is how you turn a failing ad account into a predictable sales machine.

You probably should build a better prospecting engine...

Everything we've discussed so far is about retargeting. But a retargeting system is only as good as the traffic you feed into it. If you're putting low-quality traffic in at the top, you'll get low-quality results out of the bottom. This means you also need a solid prospecting (or "cold traffic") strategy to find new potential customers.

This is where Lookalike Audiences come in, and they are probably the most powerful tool on the platform for ecommerce. A Lookalike Audience is where you give Meta a source audience (like a list of your past customers) and it goes and finds millions of other people who share similar characteristics. But just like with retargeting, not all Lookalikes are created equal. You need to prioritise based on intent.

Here's the hierarchy of Lookalike audiences you should be testing for prospecting:

1. Lookalike of your Purchasers: This is the absolute gold standard. You're telling Meta to find more people who look exactly like the ones who have already given you money. If you have at least 100-200 past purchasers, this should be your primary prospecting audience.
2. Lookalike of your Add to Carts / Initiate Checkouts: The next best thing. These are people who behave like your hottest prospects.
3. Lookalike of your Website Visitors: Good, but broader. It will find people who are generally interested in your niche.
4. Lookalike of your Video Viewers / Page Engagers: The weakest Lookalike, just like the source audience itself. I'd only test this if the others fail or you have a huge budget.

Your prospecting campaigns should be run separately from your retargeting. Their job is to constantly find new people and drive them to your website. Once they visit, your retargeting campaigns kick in to convert them. This two-step process—Prospecting and Retargeting—is the foundation of every successful Meta ads strategy for ecommerce. I remember one campaign we ran for a client selling outdoor equipment. We set up a dedicated prospecting campaign to drive traffic and a tiered retargeting campaign. The result was 18,000 new, high-quality website visitors in a short period, which then fed the retargeting funnel and drove a huge uplift in sales.

This is the engine you need to build. A constant flow of new, relevant people being introduced to your brand, and a systematic, multi-layered retargeting process to convert them over time.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To pull this all together, here is a table with my main recommendations for turning your campaigns around. This is a framework that moves you away from worrying about a single, misleading metric and toward building a robust system for growth.

I know this is a lot to take in, and it's a world away from just trying to tweak your frequency. But this systematic approach is genuinely how you build a scalable and profitable advertising engine for an ecommerce store. It takes more work up front to set up the structure and create the different audiences and ads, but the payoff is a predictable system that you can manage by looking at one or two key numbers, rather than getting lost in a sea of confusing metrics.

Getting this structure right can be the difference between an ad account that bleeds money and one that becomes the primary growth driver for your business. If you'd like to go through your account and discuss how to implement a strategy like this for your specific store, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation call. We can have a look together and map out a clear plan.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh