Criteo Commerce Max (Retail Media) vs. Google Ad Manager

Well suited--customizable enough to go to market efficiently and quickly. Not well suited--Plug-in multiple demand sources, improved targeting integrations with first-party data.

Google Ads Manager is great if you need major visibility on a large ad network rather than targeting one specific website, app or platform. Let's be real here if you have any business that is done online (sell products, generate leads, etc) you pretty much have to be on Google. I've tried other advertising solutions including competitor search engines, sponsored content solutions, social media advertising, and none really compare to the traffic you can get that is keyword-driven, meaning a user is actually demonstrating interest in whatever you sell or offer.

Incentivized

• Intuitive dashboards and reporting
• Custom templates for display media
• Flexibility in terms of setting guardrails for targeting

• Interface. You can understand how to build the ads very easily. When you first begin, and throughout the process, there are little help icons which explain what you need to understand.
• Pricing. By this, I mean the ability to change it at any time. You can select a variable rate, or you can preset it. Either way, you can change how much you spend every second if you'd like. This makes it easier to control your budget if you need to make emergency purchases and don't have much space in your budget.
• Always growing. They are always announcing something new. Always growing and always trying to update.

Incentivized

• Exportable insights at a brand, page, and placement level
• Segmentation API service to better manage first-party data
• Opportunity for non-custom implementation to allow for scalable solutions, such as programmatic backfill

• Bumper Machine - While this is still in beta, there is a lot of room for improvement for the machine to pick proper clips. I'm sure that will come in time though.
• Inclusion of a Home Page Button - This is a simple request, truly, but one that bothers me everyday. I have a campaign home button, but it's not accessible unless you go back to the beginning of the platform. If the 'home' button was static, I'd be able to go to my preferred view with one click instead of having to loop around, as there isn't a trustworthy 'back button' option either.
• Display - This is a big one. I have a love/hate relationship with display campaigns and algorithms. I have seen where they can perform [strongly] but also be massive budget bleeds with little ROI. It's not very industry specific either so I'm hoping to gain more consistency and trust with the future of the display algorithm.

Incentivized

I think it's useful for our team and we rely on it to improve our business. It is within our budget also. Although we still will need an approval from the upper-level management team, I don't see any problem with that

Incentivized

Intuitive and easy to use.

As I have said, if you want all the Google functionality and can use all of the features that Google offers on a dashboard, it's a great choice. But, I'm not a fan because I think the interface could be redesigned to be more user-friendly - make it color-coded with different options - it just feels now like you can get all, but make it easier for the end designer to use.

Incentivized

Retail Media by Criteo's support at the start (with ERMS and Hooklogic) was pretty poor, with support SLAs exceeding 72 hours. This has changed over time to having a dedicated team--therefore the 7 rating and not 8.

I could say a lot about this topic. As an agency, we get a new [representative] to talk to almost every quarter to go over select accounts and the campaigns within. Most of the time, these [educated representatives], don't provide any new feedback, or I just simply [disagree] with their approach. This is not all the time however. I have learned a lot from a rare few, [individuals] that have given me new strategies and access to betas early on. The other side of support, is the [overseas support platform]. [It] is usually not very helpful, but you can [emphasize] issues and they can research [them]. The Google Tag Implementation team is pristine though. When you need them, you need to set an appointment, which is usually 2 weeks out; they are so over-my-head intelligent, I've never had a bad experience with them and whenever I needed them for a fix, they solved it [within] the first call.

Incentivized

Cost of integration is low with Retail Media by Criteo, and Criteo's network of sponsored products is strong.

I personally liked it because of the complex features available. Knowing that this comes from Google, I did not have second thoughts - Comes from an Top tier brand. There were other products in the market, however, I chose to stick to this due to the following reasons, Customer support Self help articles

Incentivized

• Increased net revenue
• Increased profit
• CTR is unchanged (but this can be improved with better opportunities for targeting)

• It had a massively positive impact for us, allowing us to generate revenue from ad space on our website.
• Being able to custom quote ad space on our site, instead of relying on AdSense allowed us to increase our monthly ad revenue as well.
• Providing reliable data to advertisers regarding impressions and CTRs helped create repeat-customers.

Incentivized