Predicting the unpredictable: What are Commerce Audiences?

Consumers just don’t shop like they used to. 

What was once a straight line from consideration to purchase is now, well, a zig-zag. Or perhaps a square. Sometimes it’s even a circle. 

In short, today’s customer journey is anything but linear. Consumers bounce from spotting a product on Instagram to asking questions about it on Reddit to reading reviews on the open web to finally making the purchase in-store.  

For marketers, this presents a challenge—because how can you target what you can’t predict?  

The short answer: Commerce Audiences.  

The long answer: Read on.  

Say goodbye to guesswork

For marketers, reaching the right audience at the right time has always been a primary goal.  

To help them achieve this, ad platforms have traditionally focused on user attributes and demographics along with any available contextual signals. In short, they provide audiences built primarily around what they think they know about who a user is. Compounding this broad targeting is the fact that the data powering these audiences is often outdated, biased, incomplete, or just plain wrong.  

The result? Missed opportunities, disappointing campaign outcomes, and wasted ad spend.  

To reach today’s shoppers where they are, it’s clear that marketers need audiences that offer precision and accuracy without sacrificing scale.  

And that brings us neatly to Commerce Audiences.

So, what is a Commerce Audience?

Just as the name suggests, a Commerce Audience is one that’s built with shopper data. 

Whether that’s browsing, buying, or searching, any interaction a user has with a product can be used to build Commerce Audiences.  

Commerce Audiences are powered by thousands of signals based on millions of real-world shopper journeys. They’re built to help you connect with consumers at every stage of their buying journey, meaning our segments reach customers based not just on who they are but also the products they’re engaging with.  

So, unlike traditional audiences which primarily focus only on user attributes, our segments include product attributes, too.  

If you were to lift the lid on one of our Commerce Audiences, you’d find these two core components:

• Product attributes: Includes the products people are buying or browsing, the specific brands they’re engaging with, the product categories they’re considering, and their price range

• Customer attributes: Includes geo-location data, along with a user’s demographics, buying power, and the types of content they’re reading on publisher sites.

Our audiences are crafted from pre-purchase intent data and post-purchase conversion data. It’s our unique access to these commerce signals which enables our commerce AI to identify exactly who’s ready to buy—and when.  

From there, it’s a simple matter of showing them the right ad.  

What “built different” really means 

We say our Commerce Audiences are built different, but what does that really mean? 

Underneath those core components—product and customer attributes—are thousands of commerce signals that are only available through Criteo’s massive network.  

Each of these signals help us build a unique, privacy-safe picture of each user and the products they’re interested in. We can then package up these insights into exclusive segments for activation in any of Criteo’s platforms (Commerce Growth, Commerce Grid, Commerce Max) or third-party DSPs (Google DV360, The Trade Desk, and more).  

Here’s a peek at just a few of the signals we use to build Commerce Audiences:

• Products searched: Millions of searches across 18,000+ ecommerce sites, 225+ retailer partners, and thousands of open web publishers

• Products viewed: Insights from our catalog of 4 billion product SKUs, showing who’s considering what, when, and where

• Products purchased: Over $1 trillion in ecommerce transactions every year, giving us unmatched visibility into every purchase across our network 

• Ad interactions: Billions of daily product recommendations let us see which products shoppers click on, which ad formats get attention, and where those interactions happen
• Content consumption: Data from thousands of open web publishers, showing where shoppers spend their time, what they’re reading and viewing, and what interests them most.

Marketers can also bring their own data to the mix, uploading first-party customer and point-of-sale data to enhance our AI or expand their reach using our commerce signals.  

With Commerce Audiences, you can finally say goodbye to guesswork and hello to smarter targeting, personalized campaigns, and real results. 

There’s (much) more to Commerce Audiences

We’ve really just scratched the surface of Commerce Audiences here.  

Curious about the granular segments we offer, how to activate them in your platform of choice, or real-world examples of how Commerce Audiences can help you achieve better commerce outcomes? You’re in luck. 

Grab our free guide, Commerce Audiences: Built Different, right now—no form-fill required! 

To explore the power of Criteo’s Commerce Data and gain valuable insights into how pre- and post-purchase signals can help you reach your best customers, watch our on demand webinar, Anatomy of Commerce Data.