App Retargeting

App retargeting is showing ads to people who already installed your app, such as cart abandoners or lapsed users, using your own first-party audiences and deep links that send them back inside.

You know the person. They installed, they browsed, maybe they added something to a cart and never checked out. App retargeting is how you reach that known user again through paid ads, using lists you already own rather than cold prospecting. The ad ties to a deep link, so a tap on still thinking about this opens the exact item they left behind instead of dumping them at your home screen to start over.

You lean on it when a specific, valuable action almost happened and then stalled. Recovering an abandoned cart, nudging someone who browsed a category twice, reminding a user whose free trial is about to lapse. Because you are talking to people who already showed intent, the response can be far stronger than an ad shown to a stranger.

Two cautions travel together here. Privacy limits, especially on iOS App Tracking Transparency, shrink the pool of users you can actually address, so the audience you can retarget is smaller than your total install base and getting smaller. And app retargeting overlaps heavily with your free owned channels. If a push notification or an email would have reached that same lapsed user for nothing, do not pay an ad platform rupees to do a job you already had covered.

Do not rent an ad audience to talk to people you already have a free line to.