The buyer journey has shifted, and today’s shoppers no longer follow a simple, linear path to purchase. Many marketers have waved farewell to the concept of a straightforward passage from awareness to conversion, and the savviest amongst them are embracing a more flexible approach that is in tune with the dynamics of today’s consumers.
This new consumer behavior has also created opportunities across the open web, where users’ purchase intent is infused straight into the inventory. At Criteo, we call this Commerce Supply—an inventory designed for maximum impact, powered by our purpose-built SSP.
What is Commerce Supply?
Commerce Supply refers to the monetization of inventory infused with commerce signals that connects the wider shopper journey within the commerce ecosystem.
The concept is simple, this is inventory where users demonstrate high-intent shopper behavior via their browsing or searching.
Commerce Supply can take many forms, including:
- Native ad units on platforms where users are searching or browsing products
- Ad placements within shopping related search results
- Affiliate links where users are actively researching products before making a purchase
The key that connects these varying formats is that users are actively searching, browsing, or researching products and categories – they are on the prowl towards a purchase. This intent-driven activity creates a new set of valuable commerce signals that enable media buyers to optimize the targeting in their advertising campaigns.
A growing force in the programmatic landscape
The rapid growth of retail media networks shows no signs of slowing, with digital retail ad spend projected to reach approximately $166 billion in 2025.¹ Commerce Supply offers a complementary tactic for marketers, delivering similar levels of purchase intent while leveraging the reach, scale, and flexibility of the open web. This approach creates important synergies that help brands engage shoppers earlier in their journey, during the inspiration phase, even prior to landing on a retailer’s site.
As a result, Commerce Supply plays an increasingly integral part of commerce and retail media within the programmatic ecosystem.
Additionally, thanks to the strength of these intent signals, such as active product searches, performance can be achieved even in the absence of identifiers. This supply provides the potential to drive campaign results in environments where users are unknown, further diversifying how brands reach their buyers.
A win-win for smarter advertising
Criteo’s SSP offers brands and agencies a seamless way to access Commerce Supply, allowing them to benefit from shopping intent normally limited to retail media environments, but with the scale and capabilities of programmatic advertising. This supply is also an ideal way for marketers to reach consumers wherever they may be in their buyer journey- whether they’re hoping to spark an idea on an inspiration-building platform, researching gift ideas through a guide, or comparing prices with an online tool.
- For publishers: Commerce Supply empowers publishers and media owners to maximize their revenue by offering a suite of tools to monetize their websites, apps, and content effectively. It provides seamless access to high-quality demand sources, advanced targeting capabilities that leverage non-traditional consumer signals, and non-intrusive ad formats tailored to enhance user experiences while driving revenue growth.
- For brands and agencies: Commerce Supply offers a direct line to premium inventory from leading publishers and media owners to reach consumers throughout their buyer journey. It enables marketers to engage shoppers at scale with dynamic, relevant ads that drive conversions and maximize return on ad spend. With access to a broader set of commerce signals derived from user behaviors that indicate product interest, advertisers can reach their audience with greater precision and efficiency.
In essence, Commerce Supply bridges the gap between publishers and advertisers, fostering mutually beneficial partnerships that drive business forward.
This capability is one of the many reasons why Criteo has recently been ranked as a high performer on Frost & Sullivan’s Innovation Index, within The Frost Radar ™, which reports on key features of the top 10 global leading SSPs.
Ready to scale? Activate Commerce Supply with Criteo
Commerce Grid is uniquely positioned to provide this form of supply to brands and agencies, without the need to reconfigure campaigns or complexify setup. Commerce Grid’s direct integrations with media owners allow marketers to run their campaigns seamlessly through Criteo, or package this supply to easily access via deal IDs across other DSPs.
- In Commerce Growth: Advertisers on Commerce Growth will automatically gain access to Commerce Supply inventory as an additional supply source if native is enabled. This supply can drive meaningful outcomes across the entire commerce funnel. There are no requirements for where the ads click out, but advertisers on Commerce Growth will need to enable native creative formats, and provide product-level identifiers in their catalog.
- In third-party DSPs via Commerce Grid: Transacted via a deal ID within the preferred DSP, agency buyers are empowered to create curated programmatic packages leveraging Commerce Supply with the option to package it alongside Commerce Audience signals from Criteo.
Criteo’s SSP also provides built-in access to exclusive Commerce Audiences, which can be layered to this supply to drive even more performance.
The time to test and benefit from all the data and performance Commerce Grid has to offer is now. To learn more about how to activate, please reach out to your Criteo account manager, or talk to one of our experts.
¹Source: eMarketer, Retail media will make up one-fifth of worldwide digital ad spend this year
