Criteo Ads Management: Commerce Growth, Commerce Max and Criteo GO

Commerce Growth vs Commerce Max vs Criteo GO

Criteo's product names have changed in recent years, and older presentations still use different names. When reviewing a proposal or report, we first clarify which product is being discussed, because the three solve different problems and call for different team setups. The breakdown below answers the question we hear most often in first meetings: which brand needs which Criteo product.

• Commerce Growth (formerly Criteo Marketing Solutions): For brands that want sales on their own site. It includes Dynamic Retargeting and Commerce Audiences for finding new customers.
• Commerce Max: A self-serve retail media platform that promotes a brand's products on the sites of the retailers that sell them, and on the open web using those retailers' customer data. We cover the details on our Commerce Max page.
• Criteo GO: Simplified self-serve campaigns for small teams. You import the catalog, verify OneTag and choose visits, sales or new customers as the goal.
• Commerce Grid and Commerce Yield: Products for publishers and retailers. They are outside the scope of the campaigns we run on behalf of advertisers.

Criteo OneTag and product feed setup

OneTag tells Criteo who looked at what on product, cart and sales pages; the feed carries the product's title, price and image. If the two do not meet on the same product ID, no ad can be generated. The most common issue we see is with product variants: the site sends the parent product code while the feed comes with size or color codes. During setup, we check this match product by product using Google Tag Manager preview.

In Türkiye, there is also the cookie consent side. When a visitor declines marketing cookies, OneTag must not fire. This reduces audience volume somewhat, but we prefer that to putting the account and the brand at risk under KVKK (Türkiye's personal data protection law). We separately test in the browser whether the consent management tool actually stops OneTag, because many banners that look properly installed on paper do not block tags.

Where Criteo fits in your channel mix

Criteo's strength is showing product-level ads on open web publishers outside Google and Meta. That is why we usually add it once search and social campaigns are established. Because the sales figure in the Criteo dashboard also includes view-through attribution, it will not match GA4; we make budget decisions by reading both reports together and, where possible, an incrementality test.

Team setup is decisive when choosing the product. For a brand with a small marketing team and a simple catalog, starting with self-serve Criteo GO is often enough. We move to Commerce Growth for accounts that need retargeting and new customer campaigns set up separately, with detailed control over exclusions and attribution. For brands that want a comparison with RTB House, we do not run both platforms on the same visitor pool; we test them in consecutive periods and read them in the same measurement table.

Criteo: when do we recommend it?

How we manage Criteo

1. Solution choiceBased on your goal, we choose between Commerce Growth, Commerce Max and Criteo GO.
2. OneTag and feed matchingWe verify that product IDs match one to one between the tag and the feed and that the sales event comes through with the order number.
3. Consent and exclusionsWe build the cookie consent flow, recent buyers and out-of-stock products into the setup.
4. Goal and budget splitWe plan retargeting and new customer budgets on separate lines and define a success measure for each.
5. Attribution readoutWe compare the Criteo report with GA4 and order data and track post-click and post-view sales separately.

Criteo: metrics and requirements

The Brand Move Criteo Team

To learn more about Criteo ad formats, contact The Brand Move Criteo team today.

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