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Retargeting cascade

A retargeting cascade is a sequence of ad campaigns across multiple ad platforms that share a single audience definition, a single suppression rule set, and a single frequency budget. The shopper sees a coordinated set of ads — not three platforms hitting them with the same message simultaneously.

What problem this solves

Without coordination, retargeting on Meta and Google runs as two completely separate machines:

  • Both platforms target the same cart-abandoners
  • Both serve ads independently
  • Both keep showing ads even after the shopper has converted on the other surface
  • The shopper sees 12 ads instead of the 6 you intended

A retargeting cascade fixes that by treating Meta and Google audiences as views over one substrate, and by suppressing across platforms the moment a conversion fires anywhere.

Cascade ingredients

IngredientWhat it does
Audience substrateOne source-of-truth audience defined in segments — e.g. “abandoned cart in last 7 days”
Platform projectionsThe same audience is materialised as a Meta Custom Audience and a Google Customer Match list, kept in sync
Cross-domain suppression rules”If a conversion fires anywhere, remove this contact from every cascade list within N minutes”
Cross-platform frequency cap”Show no more than 6 impressions across Meta + Google combined, over 7 days”

Typical cascade shape

A common pattern for cart recovery:

Day 0 (cart abandoned)
  ├─ Meta DPA — product-specific ads with the abandoned item
  └─ Google DPA Shopping — same item on Google Search + Display

Day 2 (still not converted)
  ├─ Meta — "complete your order" creative
  └─ Google — RLSA bid increase on branded search

Day 5 (still not converted)
  └─ Meta lookalike — "find more like our customer" expansion

(at any point) Conversion fires
  ├─ Contact removed from all 5 platform projections within minutes
  └─ Cascade stops for this contact

Setting up a cascade

Define the audience as a segment

In Segments, build the rule that defines the cascade’s audience — typically a behaviour predicate (“transaction.purchase did not happen in last 7 days, but cart.added did”). This segment is your substrate.

Mark it as cascade-eligible

In the segment’s settings, enable Sync to ad platforms and select Meta + Google. Active Reach creates platform-side audiences and syncs members on a rolling basis.

Configure the cross-domain suppression rule

Go to Ads → Suppression rules → New. Pick:

  • Conversion trigger — e.g. transaction.purchase
  • Scope — which platforms this rule applies across (default: every cascade-eligible audience)
  • Latency — how fast to push the removal (default: 5 minutes, aggressive)

Build the campaign legs

For each platform, create an ad set / campaign that targets the synced audience. You can mix creative formats — DPA on Meta, Shopping on Google, lookalike on Meta — all reading from the same underlying segment.

Set the cross-platform frequency cap

In the cascade’s settings, set the combined frequency cap. Active Reach reads delivery events from both platforms and excludes shoppers who’ve hit the cap from the next sync window.

Audience sync mechanics

Active Reach pushes audience updates to ad platforms via Customer Match (Google) and Custom Audiences (Meta). The sync respects:

  • Hashing requirements — emails and phone numbers are SHA-256 hashed before upload, per platform spec
  • Per-platform minimums — Meta requires 100 matched users, Google requires 1,000; segments smaller than these are flagged before sync
  • Removal latency — adds happen on the next sync window; removals are prioritised (since conversion suppression is time-sensitive)

See Lead forms for the inverse direction (platform-originated audiences flowing back into Active Reach).

Cross-platform frequency cap

The cap counts impressions across every leg of the cascade. The data flow:

  1. Each platform sends conversion + delivery webhooks to Active Reach
  2. A rolling cap counter ticks per contact per cascade
  3. Contacts at-or-over the cap are excluded from the next sync window

This is approximate — there’s a small lag between an impression firing and the sync excluding the contact — but the contact won’t go through another full ad-set rotation past the cap.

Suppression timing

When a conversion event fires:

ActionLatency
Contact removed from Meta Custom Audience~5 min (next sync)
Contact removed from Google Customer Match~5 min (next sync)
Contact added to a “purchased this product” exclusion audience~5 min
Conversion event sent to Meta CAPI / Google Conversions APIImmediate

See Conversions API for how the conversion itself is reported back to the platforms.

What’s next

Budgets & governanceDPA & Shopping