criteo-marketing-solutions-vs-google-ads

Criteo Dynamic Retargeting and Google Ads are both tools designed to help businesses manage advertising campaigns and ensure marketing material reaches the right buyers. Criteo Dynamic Retargeting is an ad serving and retargeting program designed to help businesses get ads to the right buyers, at specific points in their buyers journey.  Google Ads is a Search Engine Marketing tool designed to help buyers have their ads listed on relevant searches and Google Partner websites. Criteo Dynamic Retargeting is most popular with small and mid-sized businesses, while Google Ads is used by businesses of all sizes.

Features

Criteo Dynamic Retargeting and Google Ads both help businesses get their advertisements to the right people, but they also have some standout features that set them apart from each other.

Criteo Dynamic Retargeting provides a custom pixel code that allows users to customize the way their advertisements appear on their websites.  Additionally, Criteo Dynamic Retargeting includes templates to help users create dynamic advertisements quickly.  Lastly, reporting features are included in Criteo Dynamic Retargeting so businesses can gauge how their advertisements are performing.  Criteo Dynamic Retargeting is ideal for businesses that need a tool for creating ads and placing them in specific places on a site.

Google Ads allows businesses to host advertisements on Google search pages and Google partnered websites while paying by the click.  This allows businesses to get their advertisements on relevant pages.  Additionally, Google Ads includes information on how many clicks advertisements are getting, making it easy to determine ROI for specific advertisements and pages.  

Limitations

Criteo Dynamic Retargeting and Google Ads are both used to target specific audiences with businesses advertisements, but they also have a few limitations that are important to consider.

Criteo Dynamic Retargeting provides a custom pixel code businesses can use to place their ads on their site, but it isn’t as simple to set up as just choosing where you want to pay for ad placement with Google Ads.  Additionally, Criteo Dynamic Retargeting does include reporting features, but they can fail to attribute traffic to other sources, resulting in imperfect reports.  Some users have experienced report outcomes that differ from analytics platforms by over 20%.

Google Ads allows users to target specific keywords for advertising, but for competitive keywords, expenses can be very high before meaningful results are seen.  Additionally, while it easy to select what keywords and searches you want to target, it is possible to spend a significant amount of money without seeing any benefits if an inexperienced advertiser is choosing suboptimal targets.

Pricing

Criteo doesn’t provide public pricing for Criteo Dynamic Retargeting, but interested businesses can reach out to the vendor for an exact quote.

Google Ads is priced based on how many users click your ads, with price per click depending on the quality of the ad campaign as well as the volume of competition.  Most keywords cost under $1.00 per click but the most competitive keywords can reach as high as $50.00 per click.