Retail media can make for strange bedfellows.
And none perhaps are so strange a pair as Google and Criteo. But there you have it.
On Wednesday, Criteo announced a partnership with Google Search Ads 360 (SA360), Google’s enterprise search advertising platform, making Criteo the first third-party vendor to integrate with Google for on-site retail media supply.
Previously, the only retail media or sponsored product extension from SA360 was via Google’s own Performance Max or Google Shopping Ads.
“When you think about the search budgets SA360 is bringing in, these are budgets that typically have stayed outside of retail media,” Sherry Smith, president of Criteo’s retail media business, told AdExchanger.
The details
Being Google SA360’s first third-party retail media network on-site activation partner sounds confusing. Put simply, Google search advertisers can now place sponsored product listings across Criteo’s network of retail media supply, consisting of some 200-plus retailers and ecommerce merchants.
It’s a big deal for Criteo, Smith said, because, well, first of all, Google is Google. SA360 represents a massive global pool of ad demand that is built primarily for traditional search placements, she said. But those advertisers have all the assets to run sponsored product listings – like a live feed of prices and product catalogue. This will be an easy, natural way for those brands to extend their search campaigns directly to retailer sites, making the jump from traditional search to retail media without even necessarily being aware of the distinction.
Also, she said, there are many big brands that don’t have intuitive trade or shopper marketing budgets that become retail media.
A large home appliance manufacturer that sells in places like Lowe’s or Home Depot, for example, doesn’t have the same existing retail media budgets like a big CPG or grocery brand, but still wants to target and attribute using retailer data.
Smith said Criteo can now access those previously unreachable budgets by way of the SA360 account seat. The retailers’ data and the advertisers’ collective demand were both “coveted” by the other, she said, but had no way to link up.
And Criteo’s retailers can opt into a holistic measurement product as part of the SA360 integration, so advertisers can target or attribute more effectively across the network. With the improved results and measurement transparency, she said, advertisers should renew and grow their retail media budgets.
Criteo’s long game
For Criteo, today’s SA360 partnership is “the first step” in what could be a critical enterprise arrangement between the ad tech pure play and Google’s advertiser business, Smith Said.
“We do plan to expand beyond SA360 into other Google marketing platform tools,” she said.
How so?
For instance, Smith said there could be a similar integration with Google DV360, Google’s DSP and main programmatic ad-buying platform.
There is also the Google Merchant Center, which is for retailers and ecommerce merchants but extends into ad buying and activation.
“We want to do more together to weave retail media into the digital advertising ecosystem,” Smith said of Criteo’s relationship with Google.
But the SA360 partnership will be plenty to manage on its own, at least for a while. These giant globe-spanning platforms operate on a totally different plane than the typical third-party programmatic ecosystem. Which is to say that they move slowly, even when anointing new leaders among smaller advertising partners.
“These big, big partnerships, they take time, as you know,” Smith said, referring to the fact that the last time she spoke with this reporter, it was because the former agency where she was CEO, Triad Retail, was being slowly subsumed and left for scraps by Walmart, its primary client.
It may take time, she said. “But we absolutely want to do more together.”
