New Customer Acquisition (Commerce Audiences)
Product ads for shoppers who do not know your site, using audiences built from Criteo's shopping signals, with separate new customer measurement.
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Criteo Commerce Growth
Criteo Dynamic Retargeting: Setup and Management
Criteo Dynamic Retargeting is the Commerce Growth solution that shows personalized product ads across the open web to people who browsed your site but did not buy. It takes products from your feed and intent from Criteo OneTag. Below, we explain what we check during setup, how we handle frequency and buyer exclusions, and when we choose Criteo over RTB House.
Purpose and appearance
What do we use this format for?
We use Criteo dynamic retargeting to bring people who stopped at a product or cart page back to the site with personalized product ads showing current price and stock, and to get the sale completed. For repeat-purchase products, the same setup also brings existing customers back for another order. Budget decisions rest on incremental sales, not dashboard ROAS.
Funnel stages it serves
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Loyalty
How Criteo dynamic retargeting chooses products
According to Criteo, its recommendation engine does not stop at the last product viewed; it selects products the user is most likely to buy next, based on more than 120 intent signals. On the bidding side, it sets prices in real time based on conversion probability. The ad's appearance is produced by DCO+: price, stock and recommendations are pulled fresh from the feed for every impression.
The practical consequence is this: if a discounted price is updated in the feed a day late, the ad shows the wrong price. That is why, during campaign periods, we plan feed refresh frequency around Criteo's read times. Before major sale days, we trigger the feed manually and compare the price shown in the ad for a few products with the price on the site; an inconsistent price wastes clicks and turns into customer complaints.
Criteo OneTag events we check before launch
The quality of Dynamic Retargeting is determined more by the events OneTag sends than by campaign settings. On a site where the product page event is missing, the model cannot know which product the visitor viewed and fills recommendations with guesses; no bid setting can close that gap. That is why, in every account we set up through Google Tag Manager, we go through this list item by item before launch:
- The viewItem event on the product page sends the same code as the product ID in the feed
- The viewBasket event on the cart page carries product ID, price and quantity
- The trackTransaction event on the sales page fires with the order number and only once
- Events run on the home page and category pages, so short visits also enter the audience
- No events are sent when cookie consent is declined
Criteo vs RTB House: when platform control matters
When managing Dynamic Retargeting, we can use the Commerce Growth platform directly as a brand or agency. That means seeing frequency and audience settings, template changes and reports without waiting on anyone. Because we also run new customer campaigns through Commerce Audiences in the same platform, we can align the exclusion rules of both campaigns in one place. This is why we prioritize Criteo for teams that want GA4 integration and incrementality testing.
For teams that want to fully outsource creative production and daily optimization, the managed-service-led RTB House Next-Gen Retargeting can be a better fit. We never run both providers on the same visitor pool; if a comparison is needed, we pause one and read the other with the same measurement table. When choosing, we also look at whether there is someone in-house to monitor the platform regularly, because platform access only makes a difference when it is used.
Frequency caps, audience duration and buyer exclusions
Retargeting breaks down fastest when someone who has already bought a product sees the same product for days. When trackTransaction works correctly, we exclude recent buyers; for repeat-purchase products such as cosmetics or pet food, we set this window based on the product's replenishment cycle. We agree the frequency cap and how long visitors stay in the audience with the Criteo team during setup, and monitor impressions per user in the first weeks.
Dynamic Retargeting: when do we recommend it?
We recommend it
- E-commerce sites with high product page traffic and noticeable cart abandonment
- Catalogs with frequently changing prices and stock where ads must stay current
- Teams that want to change frequency, audience duration and template settings themselves in the platform
- Brands that want to manage retargeting and new customer campaigns on the same platform
We don't recommend it
- Cases where an RTB House campaign will stay live and visitor audiences cannot be separated
- Catalogs with weak product images or no white background that look poor in templates
- Sites with low monthly traffic whose retargeting audience does not exceed a few thousand people
How we manage Dynamic Retargeting
- Tag auditWe verify viewItem, viewBasket and trackTransaction events with GTM preview and Criteo's test tool.
- Variant and stock matchingWe align variant codes, stock status and sale price fields with the tag.
- Template approvalWe approve logo, price display and discount labels in DCO+ templates according to the brand's guidelines.
- Audiences and exclusionsWe exclude recent buyers, products with high return rates and out-of-stock items.
- Incrementality testOnce there is enough volume, we measure the campaign's real contribution using Criteo's testing options.
Dynamic Retargeting: metrics and requirements
Metrics we track
- Post-click ROAS
- Post-view sales
- Incremental sales
- Impressions per user
- Cart recovery rate
What you need to get started
- Criteo OneTag on product, cart and sales pages
- An up-to-date feed with product ID, title, price and image
- Matching product codes in the tag and the feed
- GA4 access to compare sales data
Official sources
The Brand Move Criteo Team
Contact us nowTo learn more about Dynamic Retargeting or other Criteo ad formats, contact The Brand Move Criteo team today.
Explore further
Criteo overview
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Commerce Max (Retail Media)
Criteo Commerce Max retail media: sponsored products, onsite display and offsite campaigns with SKU-level sales reporting.
ExploreFrequently asked questions
Dynamic Retargeting: frequently asked questions
What is Criteo dynamic retargeting?
It is Criteo's retargeting solution within Commerce Growth. It shows personalized product ads to past site visitors on open web publishers, apps, video and social inventory, choosing products from your feed based on browsing intent and refreshing price and stock for every impression.
Are Criteo retargeting ads shown to the same people as Meta catalog ads?
Very likely, because both platforms target your site's visitors. The difference is the inventory: Meta shows ads in its own apps, Criteo on the open web. Because this is not the same auction, there is no bidding war, but the sale is counted in both reports. We read the budget together with Meta catalog ads in GA4.
Can we change how Criteo DCO+ ads look?
Logo, colors, font, price and discount display can be adjusted to brand guidelines. Which products appear, in what order and to whom is decided by the model. Before launch, we check templates on different screen sizes.
How do we know retargeting sales would not have happened anyway?
Criteo supports incrementality tests: part of the audience is not shown ads, and sales in the two groups are compared. In accounts with enough traffic, we run this test in the first months and base budget decisions on the result rather than the platform's own ROAS.
Can we run Criteo and RTB House retargeting together?
Not on the same visitor pool. Both would bid for the same people and count the same sales. If you want to compare them, we pause one and read the other with the same measurement table.
Let's run a first Dynamic Retargeting review together.
In a free call we review your audience, inventory needs and measurement setup, then tell you in writing which platform makes sense to start with.
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