Stop Burning Cash on Cold Traffic: The 2025 Guide to Video Engagement Retargeting

The Core Concept
Facebook video retargeting allows you to create Custom Audiences based on how long users watched your videos (e.g., ThruPlay, 25%, 50%, 95%). This method bypasses pixel reliance, offering a more stable way to retarget high-intent users who haven't yet clicked to your site.

The Strategy
Focus on a "Video Funnel" approach: run broad awareness videos to cold audiences, then retarget viewers who watched 50%+ with specific offer ads or product demonstrations. This pre-qualifies traffic, ensuring you only pay for conversion ads shown to people who are already interested.

Key Metrics

• ThruPlay Cost: Target <$0.05 per ThruPlay to ensure efficient top-of-funnel filling.
• Audience Retention: Aim for 25% of viewers reaching the 50% watch mark.
• ROAS: Retargeting layers should aim for 3.0x+ ROAS compared to prospecting.

Tools like Koro can automate the creation of the massive volume of video variations needed to keep these funnels fresh.

Engagement-based retargeting is the process of serving ads to users who have interacted with your content on-platform, specifically video views, rather than off-platform website visits. Unlike pixel-based retargeting, this data is owned by Meta and is unaffected by iOS privacy restrictions or cookie blockers.

Engagement Custom Audiences are groups of people who have taken specific actions with your content on Facebook or Instagram, such as watching a video for a certain duration. Unlike standard website custom audiences, these segments are resilient against signal loss because the interaction happens entirely within Meta's "walled garden."

In my experience working with D2C brands, relying solely on pixel data for retargeting is a recipe for shrinking audiences. Signal loss from iOS 14+ has degraded website custom audience sizes by up to 40% for some accounts. Video engagement audiences offer a stable, scalable alternative because Meta knows exactly who watched your video, regardless of their device settings.

Why It Matters for E-commerce

For e-commerce brands, the path to purchase is rarely linear. A user might watch a product demo on Instagram Reels but not click through immediately. If you only retarget link clicks, you miss this high-intent prospect. By retargeting 50% or 95% video viewers, you capture people who demonstrated significant interest but didn't take the final step.

Not all video views are created equal. A 3-second view is often just a scroll-by, while a 95% view indicates deep interest. To maximize ROAS, you must segment your audiences based on their level of intent.

Here is how I recommend structuring your audiences based on "temperature":

Micro-Example:

• The Curious: If they watched 50% of a "Problem/Solution" video for a back pain device, retarget them with a testimonial video from a doctor. They understand the problem; now they need trust.

Video engagement creates a larger, cheaper, and more accurate retargeting pool than website clicks. While click-through rates (CTR) for e-commerce hover around 1% [2], video view rates are significantly higher, allowing you to build retargeting audiences 10x faster for the same budget.

The Cost Efficiency Equation

Driving a user to your website might cost $1.50 - $3.00 per click (CPC). However, getting a user to watch 50% of a video often costs $0.10 - $0.30. This means you can populate a "Warm" audience of 1,000 people for $100 via video, whereas getting 1,000 website visitors could cost $1,500+.

Signal Resilience

Since the introduction of Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT), pixel data has become less reliable. Meta estimates that they lose signal on approximately 60% of iOS users who opt out of tracking. However, video views happen on Meta's servers. They track every second watched with 100% accuracy. This makes video engagement audiences the most reliable source of truth for your mid-funnel targeting.

Strategic Shift: Instead of forcing cold traffic straight to a product page (where you lose signal), keep them on the platform with video. Let them watch, learn, and qualify themselves before you ask for the click.

Implementing a video retargeting strategy requires a systematic approach to creative testing and audience building. You cannot simply launch one video and hope for the best. You need a pipeline.

Phase 1: The Content Flood (Days 1-10)

Your goal is to fill your retargeting pools cheaply. Launch a "Broad" campaign optimized for ThruPlay or Video Views.

• Action: Launch 3-5 distinct video angles (e.g., Unboxing, Problem/Solution, Founder Story).
• Targeting: Open/Broad (Let the algorithm find viewers).
• Metric: Look for the video with the lowest Cost Per ThruPlay.

Phase 2: The Audience Build (Days 11-20)

Once you have data flowing, set up your Custom Audiences in Ads Manager.

• Action: Create audiences for "Video Viewers (25%)", "Video Viewers (50%)", and "Video Viewers (95%)".
• Retention Window: Set this to 30 days for high-intent (95%) and 365 days for broad awareness (25%).
• Micro-Example: If you sell coffee, the 365-day audience is great for holiday promos, while the 30-day audience is for immediate sales.

Phase 3: The Conversion Layer (Days 21-30)

Now, activate the retargeting ads.

• Action: Create a Sales campaign targeting the "50% Viewers" and "95% Viewers" audiences you built.
• Creative: Show them a specific offer or a "Why Us?" comparison chart.
• Exclusion: EXCLUDE "Purchasers (180 Days)" to avoid wasting spend.

The Bottleneck: The biggest challenge here is creative volume. To run this effectively, you need fresh video assets every week to prevent ad fatigue. This is where manual production usually breaks down.

Bloom Beauty, a cosmetics brand, faced a common dilemma: they knew video retargeting worked, but they couldn't produce enough content to keep their audiences engaged. Their "Texture Shot" ad was a winner, but frequency shot up, and performance tanked after two weeks.

The Problem:
Competitors were launching dozens of new creatives weekly. Bloom's small team was stuck trying to manually edit one or two high-quality videos, leaving them unable to refresh their retargeting pools. They needed volume without sacrificing their "Scientific-Glam" brand voice.

The Solution:
Bloom used Koro's Competitor Ad Cloner combined with their Brand DNA feature. instead of starting from scratch, they analyzed a winning competitor ad structure. Koro's AI cloned the structure—the pacing, the hook style, the visual transitions—but rewrote the script entirely using Bloom's specific brand voice and unique selling propositions.

The Results:

• 3.1% CTR: The new AI-generated variant became an outlier winner.
• 45% Improvement: It beat their own manual control ad by nearly half.
• Scale: They moved from producing 2 ads a week to 20+ variants, keeping their retargeting audiences fresh and responsive.

For D2C brands who need creative velocity, not just one video—Koro handles that at scale. It turns the bottleneck of production into a competitive advantage.

The strategy Bloom Beauty used isn't magic; it's a repeatable framework I call the "Competitor DNA Method." This approach leverages what is already working in the market to inform your retargeting creative, minimizing the risk of testing completely unproven concepts.

Step 1: Identify the Signal
Don't guess what hooks work. Use tools to scan the Facebook Ads Library for competitors in your niche. Look for ads that have been running for longer than 30 days—this is a strong signal that the ad is profitable.

Step 2: Extract the Structure
Analyze the winning video. What is the hook? Is it a question? A shock statement? A visual demo? Map out the sequence (e.g., Hook -> Agitate Problem -> Product Demo -> Social Proof -> CTA).

Step 3: Inject Your DNA
This is where Koro excels. You feed the winning structure into the AI, but apply your brand's specific "DNA"—your tone, your unique benefits, your customer avatar's language. The AI generates scripts and visual concepts that match the proven structure but sell your product.

Step 4: Rapid Variation Testing
Generate 5-10 variations of this concept. Change the avatar, change the voiceover, or swap the opening hook. Launch these to your "Video Viewers (25%)" audience to see which specific angle converts the warm traffic best.

Note: Koro excels at rapid UGC-style ad generation at scale, but for cinematic brand films with complex VFX, a traditional studio is still the better choice.

Measuring retargeting success requires looking beyond vanity metrics like "views." You need to track metrics that indicate actual movement down the funnel. In 2025, ROAS is important, but it's a lagging indicator. You need leading indicators to optimize daily.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

1. Frequency: For retargeting, monitor this closely. If Frequency exceeds 4.0 over 7 days, your audience is fatigued. You need new creative immediately.
2. Hook Rate (3-Second View Rate): This tells you if your creative is stopping the scroll. Aim for >30% [5]. If it's lower, your opening is weak.
3. Hold Rate (ThruPlay Rate): The percentage of people who watch to 15 seconds or completion. This indicates content quality. A high Hold Rate means you are successfully building a warm audience.
4. Cost Per Add to Cart (CPATC): For retargeting audiences, this should be significantly lower (30-50%) than your prospecting campaigns.

The Trap: Do not judge your Awareness (Top of Funnel) videos by ROAS. Their job is to build the audience cheap. Judge them by Cost Per ThruPlay. Judge your Retargeting (Middle/Bottom of Funnel) videos by ROAS and CPA.

The old way of doing video retargeting involved hiring creators, shipping products, waiting weeks for edits, and praying the ad worked. The new way uses AI to iterate instantly. Here is the breakdown:

If your bottleneck is creative production, not media spend, Koro solves that in minutes. Stop letting logistics kill your campaign performance.