Criteo vs The Trade Desk

Choose Criteo if you need product feed data to tailor banner content per viewer. Choose The Trade Desk if display campaigns need delivery set by time and location.

For ecommerce teams working from product feeds, Criteo can tailor banner products, prices, or creative for each viewer as the ad is served. Criteo also attributes conversions after an impression even when a shopper does not click, within a chosen window. Its campaign interface can be difficult to use, and its controls can feel limited to campaign operators.

Programmatic buyers can schedule display delivery by hour and weekday, then restrict where ads appear across geographic areas. The Trade Desk also gives engineers enterprise APIs for custom development. Campaign setup requires configuration rather than choosing a template. Because the company owns no media, its bidding decisions are independent of any publisher.

Criteo advertisers value campaigns that produce business results, including revenue or return. They also report that the interface and controls can be difficult or limited. Some describe slow or ineffective help with setup, account issues, or billing. The Trade Desk's users value its broad campaign, audience, and data features for programmatic buying. Reviewers say reporting and parts of the interface make campaign or forecast information harder to use.

Criteo describes an online fashion retailer in Australia and New Zealand that personalized shopping across devices and brought existing customers back through display and in-app retargeting. The company reports that this work drove revenue and customer orders at scale. The Trade Desk tells of a global furniture brand that used omnichannel advertising and first-party data to pursue online conversions and loyalty membership in Australia. It saw a marked conversion increase when audiences encountered ads through audio and social, compared with social alone.