Mumbai: Criteo (Nasdaq: CRTO), the commerce media company, today announced the general availability of its self-service demand-side platform (DSP), Commerce Max, giving brands and agencies a single point of entry to retail media inventory onsite and across premium publishers offsite. Complementing Commerce Max, Criteo is also expanding its retailer monetization solution suite, offering retailers the means to tap previously unattainable demand by paving the way for the integration of marketplace and in-store monetization technologies.

Retail media has proven extremely successful for retailers looking to grow additional revenue streams and brands and agencies looking to engage consumers actively in a buying mindset. Until now, however, fragmentation across the industry has held retailers, brands and agencies back from reaching their full potential with retail media.

“Our focus is enabling all commerce-driven companies to buy and sell audiences engaged in shopping. The process has to be frictionless, and it has to solve for fragmentation,” said Criteo CEO Megan Clarken. “With today’s launch, we’re equipping our clients with the right tools to cut through and connect in a more unified retail media ecosystem that ultimately creates more unity across the broader advertising marketplace.”

Driving Commerce at Scale

Commerce Max entered market testing in 2022 with leading consumer electronics retailer, Best Buy, and the world's foremost media investment company, GroupM, as exclusive Alpha partner. Over this period, Commerce Max enrolled 10 retailers including Best Buy, Macy's and Shipt. Retailers who have completed campaigns have more than doubled conversion rates on average when running both onsite and offsite advertising through the platform.

Industry Praise for Commerce Max

"Through Criteo we now have one point of entry to a pivotal retail media network, all within a single platform – Commerce Max – that applies the same KPIs to retail media as those we use for our programmatic buys,” said Unilever club team shopper marketing lead Billy Dyer following another successful test with GroupM and Unilever in which the brand’s conversion rate rose by over 400 per cent.

“Combining onsite and offsite targeting enables us to focus media spend across a broader part of the shopper funnel while finding the most suitable audiences wherever they are.”

“Shipt is known for having a unique member community that is loyal to our platform, and when coupled with Criteo's onsite and offsite products and enhanced personalization features in our full-funnel offering, advertisers have found it to drive an ever greater return for their ad spend,” said Shipt VP, CPG partnerships David Young.

“We’re excited to be at the forefront of the rollout of the Commerce Max platform, starting with its initial testing phase and now its general availability,” said Mark Heitke, Director of Ad Products and Audience Strategy at Best Buy Ads. “The platform offers a variety of onsite and offsite capabilities, giving our brand partners even more options to reach our audiences in meaningful ways.”

Now in general availability, brands and agencies across the globe can use Commerce Max to access data and inventory across multiple retailers and marketplaces, finding valuable audiences on these sites and extending these audiences offsite. This is underpinned by closed-loop measurement, enabling advertisers to quickly and efficiently determine the effectiveness of campaigns and optimize accordingly.

Criteo is a leader and one of the first to bring digital measurement standards to retail media with Commerce Max. Criteo’s partnership with Integral Ad Science allows brands and agencies to measure viewability and invalid traffic on a retailer’s site across all ad formats, including native and sponsored products by 2024.     

A Unified Approach for Retailers

The second component of today’s launch is the unveiling of Criteo’s retailer monetization solution suite. This suite marks the next phase in the development of Criteo’s core monetization technology, Commerce Yield, which will not only provide retailers and marketplaces with a complete media toolset but also serve commerce companies such as automakers, movie theatres, transportation services, airlines and more.

Commerce Yield combines Criteo’s former Retail Media Platform with several solutions derived from recent strategic acquisitions, including

Commerce Yield Marketplace: Through Criteo's strategic acquisition of Mabaya, Commerce Yield Marketplace will help monetization officers integrate marketplace tactics and formats.

Commerce Yield In-Store: The powerful union of Brandcrush and Criteo's in-store monetization technology, providing advertisers access to a wider range of offline inventory.

Commerce Yield Insights: Previously called Gradient, a cutting-edge suite of insight and data tools which provides digital-shelf insights to support enterprise-level retail media buys.

Criteo’s leadership team will unveil more details during a hosted event today, 12 September at 12p.m. Eastern Time. To watch the broadcast, click here.