20 Aug Should You Use a Video Engagement Custom Audience?
Generally, no. It’s a popular tactic on paper: run video ads, spend to build viewership, then retarget people who watched a meaningful chunk of the video toward a purchase — the theory being that deep video engagement signals real interest. In practice, this approach tends to underperform, sometimes badly enough to drag the whole campaign down with it.
Why the theory doesn’t hold up
Meta’s video engagement objective does exactly what it says: it groups people by how likely they are to watch a video. Not how likely they are to click a link. Not how likely they are to buy something. These are genuinely different groups of people, grouped by genuinely different behaviors.
Someone watching 75% of a video has shown they’re the kind of person who watches videos to that point — nothing more. That’s not the same signal as someone who’s shown interest in your product or offer specifically.
What happens when you retarget them anyway
Video engagement is a low-commitment action — about as easy an action as exists on the platform. When a retargeting campaign is built on a foundation of “people who watched a video,” it’s pulling in a large volume of low-intent viewers who happened to sit through some footage. Feeding that volume of low-intent signal into your retargeting system teaches your account’s targeting the wrong lesson about who your real buyers are — the same “rubbish in, rubbish out” problem that shows up when a hooky, clickbait-style ad drags in the wrong audience. Here, it’s video watch time doing the misleading instead of a clickbait hook, but the outcome is the same: a campaign that looks like it’s reaching people, but isn’t reaching the right ones.
Build from the deepest action available instead
The general principle: the deeper the action, the better the audience. A link click is a stronger signal than a video view. Landing page view is stronger than a link click. Add to cart is stronger than a landing page view. Purchase is the strongest signal of all. When choosing what to build a custom audience from, reach for the deepest action your data can support — not the easiest one to accumulate volume on.
A quick self-check
- Am I choosing this audience because it’s easy to build volume, or because it actually reflects buying intent?
- Have I checked whether a deeper action — add to cart, initiate checkout, purchase — is available to build from instead?
- Is this retargeting campaign actually converting, or just reaching a lot of people who watched a video once?
This breakdown is written by Jason Gan, a Meta Certified Professional and Badged Meta Business Partner who has personally audited over 1,000 advertiser accounts since 2010. You can see real account breakdowns on the Jason Gan YouTube channel.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a video engagement custom audience useful for retargeting? Generally, no. It’s a popular tactic — spend on video ads, retarget people who watched a certain percentage, on the theory that deep video engagement signals purchase intent. In practice, this tends to underperform badly, because watching a video and being ready to buy are two very different actions.
Why doesn’t retargeting video watchers lead to purchases? Meta’s video engagement objective groups people by how likely they are to watch a video, not by how likely they are to click a link or complete a purchase. These are different audiences entirely. Someone who watches most of a video hasn’t necessarily shown any buying intent — they’ve shown that they like watching videos.
What happens if I retarget people who only watched my video? Video engagement is a low-commitment action — it takes almost nothing to watch part of a video. Feeding a large volume of these low-intent viewers into a retargeting campaign teaches the account’s targeting system the wrong lesson about who your real audience is, and campaigns built this way tend to underperform or collapse rather than convert.
What’s a better custom audience to use instead of video engagement? Build custom audiences from the deepest action available. Add to cart is stronger than a link click. Purchase is stronger than add to cart. As a general principle, the deeper and more committed the action, the more reliable the resulting audience is for retargeting.
If you’re not sure which audiences are actually helping your account
Book a Meta Ads Audit — $80 / 30 Minutes →
No login required. A real look at which of your custom audiences are pulling their weight.