2018 was the year Amazon became the number-three digital ad platform in the US, according to eMarketer‘s analysis.
But that is a fraction of the platform’s overall revenue, led by retail sales.
At the nexus of those two channels, Criteo, an advertising technology platform best known for offering retargeting capabilities, is trying to help smaller retailers compete with Goliath.
Following a series of acquisitions, the company recently began rolling its services in to a new offering, designed to give rival retailers a leg-up.
“Over the past couple of months, Criteo has begun launching a platform called Criteo Audience Activation Platform, or CAAP for short,” Criteo EVP for Criteo Brand Solutions John Roswech in this video interview with Beet.TV.
“This platform will really allow our retail partners to go after national media dollars, really to compete with Amazon for those dollars.”
CAAP has four pillars:
- CPM Onsite – allows retailers to offer IAB ad formats and native display ads, for brands to influence the positioning of products on their sites.
- CPM Offiste – allows advertisers to build lookalike audience segments using retailers’ audience data, so they can be targeted offsite and drive back to a retail site.
- CPC Onsite – allows brands sponsorships that boost their products’ positioning on retailer pages like Target, Walmart and Best Buy.
- CPC Offsite – similar to CPC Onsite but allows the retailers to go after performance dollars.
The whole thing is premised on Criteo having a global database of products listed by thousands of retailers, as well as the means to make ads for them tick.
This interview is part of a series titled Advertising Reimagined: The View from DMEXCO 2018, presented by Criteo. Please find more videos from the series here.