How can i tell if retargeting cannibalizes my prospecting campaigns?

[VioletYB]

I’m trying to figure out if my retargeting ads are actually cannibalizing my prospecting campaigns. I’ve noticed my cost per lead for new audiences keeps creeping up whenever I increase the budget for my site visitor retargeting, and I’m not sure if it’s just coincidence or a real budget allocation problem.

[MichaelFT]

Yeah, I’ve seen it too. When I push the site visitor retargeting budget up, the cost per lead for fresh audiences climbs as well. It feels like the auction just shifts and the new wins are coming at a higher price, so the prospecting side looks worse even though I didn’t touch the prospecting bid.

[Ryan73]

I tried splitting budgets and forcing a hard cap on retargeting frequency, plus separate bidding strategies, but the CPL creep on new audiences still showed up after I increased retargeting spend. It’s like the budget leaks into the upper funnel somehow.

[Grace69]

Do you think attribution overlap is muddying what’s really happening? It could be that conversions are counted in both buckets or the last touch wins differently as budgets shift.

[Paisley_M]

I did a quick holdout once and paused retargeting for a week to sanity check. Prospecting CPL ticked up a bit, but total leads didn’t budge in the long run and I wasn’t sure what to trust. I also wondered if creative fatigue on the retargeting side was part of it, so I swapped in some fresh ads and watched the clicks wobble before I shelved that idea.