Before You Create a Line Item
A line item is where you choose the products and the retailer you want to advertise with. In other platforms these are sometimes known as ad sets or ad groups.
Before you start:
You need a campaign. Line items sit inside a campaign. If you have just created one, you will be redirected here automatically.
One line item, one retailer. To advertise across several retailers, create a separate line item for each, or use the multiple line item workflow described at the end of this guide.
Group products that belong together. Keywords apply at the line item level, so every product in a line item should be relevant to the same keywords.
How to Group Products
We recommend segmenting line items by product category, price range, or launch status (new products versus best sellers). Category is usually the most useful, because it lets you bid differently against different category floor prices and keeps keyword targeting relevant.
Create a New Sponsored Products Line Item
Go to the Campaigns section.
Click the name of the campaign you want to add a line item to.
On the campaign page, click +Line Item on the left.
Choose how you want to proceed:
- Single retailer setup: build a retailer-specific line item now. This guide follows this route.
- Multi-retailer setup: choose one product list and create line items across several retailers in bulk. The final steps of this guide cover this route.
- I'll set them up later: creates the campaign shell only.
Step 1: Configure Settings
Name Your Line Item and Choose a Retailer
Your line item name is visible only to you. It appears on the Campaigns page, in Analytics, and on your monthly invoices, but never in your ads. We recommend choosing a name you will still recognize in a report six months from now.
Names must be unique within a campaign.
Choose one retailer. Click the dropdown and select where your ads should run. You can select only one retailer per line item, and the list of products available to promote updates to match that retailer's catalog.
Choose Whether to Target Opted-Out Shoppers
Some retailers must ask shoppers whether they accept tracking. If your chosen retailer has this enabled, you will see a Targeting Based on Tracking Preference setting with two options:
Opted-in shoppers only (the default).
Both opted-in and opted-out shoppers.
This choice affects your reported performance. No sales attribution is collected for opted-out shoppers, because attribution depends on a user ID. So including them:
Increases total impressions and clicks.
Makes return on ad spend and other conversion metrics look lower, because some of the sales your ads drove cannot be attributed.
Choose Standard or Adaptive CPC Bidding
Select either Standard or Adaptive CPC optimization. This choice changes which fields you see later when you set your bid.
Standard gives you the full set of bid controls: line item CPC, product bid overrides, page type bid multipliers, and keyword bid overrides.
Adaptive CPC manages pacing and auction participation for you. You set a Max CPC and nothing else. It requires a daily budget and an end date.
You can switch bid type later by editing the line item.
Set Your Start and End Dates
Start date: Set to today's date by default. You can choose any future date instead. A future start date gives the line item a Scheduled status, and it switches to Active automatically on that day.
End date: You have two options:
None: the line item stays Active as long as it has funds to spend.
A specific date: the line item stops serving and switches to Ended at the end of that day.
This is also where you can set up an Ad Schedule if you wish. Ad scheduling is optional. By default, your ads run at all times.
Under Schedule, click Ad Schedule.
Select Run Ads on a schedule.
Choose a day, or use the Weekday or Weekend presets.
Set a start time and an end time, then click Add.
For more information about ad scheduling, see Schedule When Your Ads Run.
Set Your Budget and Pacing
Choose how much this line item may spend, and how quickly.
Budget:
Uncapped: spends freely from funds available at campaign level, stopping when the campaign budget is reached. Status then changes to Budget Hit.
Capped: enter a maximum. The line item stops at that amount, and may not reach it.
Daily Budget and Monthly Budget control how quickly you spend. Both default to None, which means the line item has no rate limit of its own and spends as quickly as it can win auctions. It can still stop early if a campaign-level cap is reached. To learn more, please see Understand Budget, Caps, and Pacing.
Daily Budget has three options:
Automated (Recommended): daily spend adjusts itself so the full budget is spent across the flight. Requires a capped budget with an end date, or a fixed monthly budget.
Fixed: never spend more than this amount per day.
None: no daily limit.
Monthly Budget has two options:
Fixed: never exceed this amount per calendar month.
None: no monthly limit.
You can set a fixed daily budget and a fixed monthly budget together. You cannot combine Fixed and Automated, since they are options within the same setting.
Step 2: Define The Keyword Targeting Strategy
Your keyword targeting strategy controls which searches your ads can appear on. You will see three options:
Option | Targets | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|
Generic, Branded, and Conquesting (the default) | Non-branded discovery terms, your own brand terms, and competitor brand terms | You want conquesting reach without managing a separate line item |
Generic and Branded | Non-branded discovery terms, plus your own brand terms | Your standard activity: reach new shoppers and defend your brand |
Conquesting | Competitor brand terms only | You want to budget, bid, and report on conquesting separately |
What the three keyword types mean:
Generic: broad, non-branded terms describing a product or category, such as "running shoes" or "face wash."
Branded: terms containing your own brand name and close variants. Shoppers using these already know you.
Conquesting: terms containing a competitor's brand name.
We recommend a dedicated Conquesting line item if you want conquesting reach. In a combined line item, conquesting terms tend to attract very little spend, because your ad is inherently less relevant on a competitor's brand term than the competitor's own. A separate line item lets you bid higher on conquesting alone.
Adding Manual Keywords
You have two optional controls here:
Negative keywords: terms you never want to appear on.
Submitted keywords: terms you want to target. The retailer validates these, and they deliver once approved. Your products already have keywords attached automatically by our keyword model.
To learn more about keyword limits, match types, and how automatic and submitted keywords interact, please see How Keyword Targeting Works in Sponsored Products.
Step 3: Select the Products to Advertise
Search for products in two ways.
By keyword, using the Search Account Catalog tab:
Enter one or more words. The search matches product names.
Click Search. Results appear below the field.
Narrow with the filters if needed.
Click the checkbox or anywhere in a product row to select it, or click Select All Results.
By product ID, using the Search by Product ID tab:
Select an identifier type: GTIN, UPC or EAN, MPN, model number, SKU ID, SKU key, or parent ID.
Paste your IDs into the field, one per line.
Click Search products.
Exact matches appear in the list. Anything without a match is listed under IDs with no matches at the bottom.
We recommend the following when selecting products:
Start broad with a top-level category, then narrow with subcategories.
Use the category hierarchy filter to narrow by taxonomy.
Sort by availability first, so you do not select out-of-stock products.
To review the products you have already selected in the line item, view the Products panel on the right-hand side of the page. The total number of products selected versus Criteo's recommended amount is also displayed here.
Avoid searching by product ID unless you have a specific list of SKUs in hand.
Step 4: Set Your Line Item Bid
Your bid is the baseline amount you are willing to pay for one click. It does not include your account fees.
Enter the amount in the Bidding box.
Your bid must be above the minimum bid shown beneath the field. That minimum can change, and we recommend checking it when you revisit the line item.
How The Auction Works
Criteo Commerce Max runs a first-price auction, so each bid competes on its own and the highest bid wins. Your bid is not the only factor. Relevance and predicted performance also determine which product wins. Your bid mainly controls how much volume your ads deliver.
Your Bid May Be Adjusted
With the Conversions or Revenue Optimizer, and with Adaptive CPC, the engine adjusts around the figure you enter. With the Clicks Optimizer it does not.
If you do not know what to enter, we recommend using the suggested bid range shown here. It reflects what recently won comparable auctions. To learn more, please see Choose a Bidding Strategy for Sponsored Products.
Step 5: Review and Launch
Click Save and Continue after setting your bid and optimization strategy.
Review every setting on the summary screen.
Click Launch.
See the Sponsored Products Campaign Launch Checklist for a summary of what to review before launching your line item.
What happens next depends on your start date:
Start date is today: the line item launches and becomes Active.
Start date is in the future: the line item saves as Scheduled and becomes Active by itself on the day.
You can find the line item afterward by opening its campaign from the Campaigns section and going to the Line Items page.
What Happens After Launch
You control whether a line item spends. A line item's status comes from its configuration and the Off/On toggle on the Line Items dashboard. Line items set to On or Active spend. Line items set to Off or Inactive do not. You can change this at any time.
Inactive line items are archived after 90 days, and archived line items cannot be reactivated. If you need one back, copy its settings into a new line item and set that one live.
Create Multiple Line Items at Once
You can select one list of products and create line items across every retailer that carries them, rather than building each line item separately.
Each line item created contains all or some of your selected products, depending on what each retailer stocks. There are two stages: choosing products and keywords, then confirming which retailers and line items to create.
Choose Multi-retailer setup when you click +Line Item.
Select Products and Keywords for Multiple Retailers
Search for products by keyword or by product ID, exactly as in single line item setup. In this workflow the available identifier types are GTIN, UPC or EAN, MPN, or SKU key.
Keywords are optional at this stage and apply to every line item this workflow creates:
Negative keywords can be added at broad and exact match.
Submitted keywords can be added at exact match. Your products already carry automatic keywords from our keyword model.
Manual keyword associations are always reviewed and validated per line item, at each retailer's discretion, even when submitted in bulk here.
Click Next when your products and keywords are set.
Review and Confirm Line Items by Retailer
Commerce Max matches your selected products against every retailer in your account's region that stocks them, under brands associated with your account. Each match becomes a line item you can create.
For each retailer you will see:
Retailer: line items are always retailer-specific.
Line item name: pre-filled as
[Retailer Name] – [Campaign Name] – MM/DD HR:MIN. You can rename it, but names must be unique.Products: how many of your selected products this retailer carries. Click the fraction to review them, and copy the GTINs of any not found.
Start date: today by default, and cannot be earlier.
End date: today or later, or None.
Optimization: Clicks, Conversions, or Revenue.
Line item bid (CPC): defaults to the lowest value in the suggested bid range for that line item's products.
Max bid (CPC): applies with the Conversions or Revenue Optimizer, as a hard cap on adjusted bids.
Line item budget: Uncapped or Capped. Defaults to Uncapped.
Static daily budget and static monthly budget are both optional, defaulting to None.
To skip a retailer, deselect the checkbox beside its name.
Confirm your products. You must select the confirmation checkbox to acknowledge that you have reviewed the products in each line item. Then click Create # Line Items.
New line items are created with Active status and behave exactly like any created individually.