What Are Onsite Sponsored Products?
Onsite Sponsored Products are native product ads that promote individual products on a retailer's website, in the places shoppers are already browsing and searching.
They are built to increase your sales, your visibility, and your share of the category.
What makes them different from other ad formats:
There is no creative to make. Product images, titles, and prices are pulled directly from the retailer's product feed, so the ad shows shoppers the same image and price they would see on the retailer's own page.
They look native. Each ad matches the retailer's site and app design, and a sponsored product sits alongside organic results rather than in a separate ad slot.
You pay per click. You are charged only when a shopper clicks your ad, on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.
Reporting is at product level. You see how each individual product performed, in real time, and can adjust bids from actual sales data.
Sales are attributed back to the ad. Closed-loop measurement connects your spend to the revenue it drove.
When Sponsored Products Are the Right Choice
Sponsored Products suit you when your goal is visibility and sales for specific products, rather than brand-level awareness.
They are particularly effective in the following situations:
You are launching a new product. Organic ranking takes time to build. A sponsored placement puts a new product in front of shoppers who are already searching the category.
You have priority or seasonal products to push. Best sellers, seasonal lines, or overstock: anything where you want to control which of your products a shopper sees first.
You are new to retail media. Setup is quick, the optimization is automated, and you can start with a modest budget. There is no creative production to commission.
They are less suited when your objective is reach or awareness rather than product sales, or if you want to control the creative itself. In these cases, we recommend other Commerce Max campaign types.
Where Sponsored Products Ads Appear
Your ads are eligible to appear across the highest-traffic areas of a retailer's site and app. There are 10 page types available for Sponsored Products campaigns:
Page type | Where it appears |
|---|---|
Homepage | The retailer's front page |
Search | Search results, when a shopper searches a term relevant to your products |
Merchandising | Curated and promotional pages |
Category | Category and browse pages |
Product Detail | Individual product pages |
Checkout | The basket and checkout flow |
Confirmation | The post-purchase confirmation page |
Deals | Offer and promotion pages |
Search Bar | The search box itself, before results load |
AI Assistant | The retailer's AI shopping assistant |
Once your line item is live you can bid differently by page type, using bid multipliers. To learn more, please see Adjust Your Sponsored Products Bids and Reach Shoppers in AI Assistants With Sponsored Products.
What Is the Difference Between a Page Type and a Placement?
Both words appear throughout Commerce Max and in your reports, and they mean different things.
A page type is the shopper's context: the kind of retailer page your ad can appear on. Search, Category, Product Detail, and the seven others listed above.
A placement is a single ad slot on that page. The retailer configures each one, and each has its own ID and its own position on the page: which grid it belongs to, and where it sits vertically and horizontally.
One page holds several placements. A search results page might offer a slot above the results, another part-way down, and a third in a sidebar. All three share the page type Search, but each is a separate opportunity with its own configuration.
Why the distinction matters:
Use page type to | Use placement to |
|---|---|
Understand and adjust performance by shopper context | Understand which specific slots are working |
Bid up or down with page type bid multipliers (Search differently from Product Detail) | Read performance at slot level and prioritise the strongest |
The auction runs at placement level, meaning your products compete for an individual slot, and the winning product is rendered into it. Page type is how you group and steer that activity; the placement is the inventory itself.
We recommend adjusting your bids by page type first, then looking at which individual placements are producing your best results.
How the Sponsored Products Auction Works
Sponsored Products inventory is sold through a first-price auction on a cost-per-click basis, held in real time.
What Happens When A Shopper Loads A Page?
A shopper opens a page where Sponsored Products placements are available.
An auction runs for those placements, in real time.
Your bid competes against other advertisers bidding for the same placement.
The winning product is chosen from bid and predicted performance. Our engine assesses which products are most likely to be relevant and to perform well, so the highest bid does not automatically win.
If you win, your ad appears in the placement.
You are charged only when a shopper clicks, at the winning cost-per-click price.
Where You Can Set Bids
There are four levels, in increasing precision:
Level | What it controls |
|---|---|
Line item | Your default bid for everything in the line item |
Product | A specific bid for one product, replacing the line item bid |
Keyword | A specific bid for one search term |
Page type | A multiplier applied by the kind of page the ad appears on |
To learn more, please see Choose a Bidding Strategy for Sponsored Products for how much to bid, and Adjust Your Sponsored Products Bids for how to use the four levels.
How Campaigns, Line Items, and Balances Fit Together
A balance, a campaign, and a line item all have to exist before an ad can run.
Balances Hold Your Funds
A balance is the money available for your ads to spend. You cannot run an ad without at least one balance mapped to your campaign.
Balances are managed in the Billing section.
Ask your Criteo representative to add the balance from your signed insertion orders.
One balance can fund several campaigns, and a campaign can draw on more than one.
Campaigns Hold Your Budget and Your Measurement
A campaign groups your activity by budget and attribution settings. It is defined by its name, its budget, and its attribution model.
Campaigns are the foundation of your account structure. You manage them in the Campaigns section.
Line Items Hold What Runs
A line item is where you choose the products and the retailer.
A line item can hold many products, but runs on one retailer only. To advertise across several retailers, create a line item for each.
Line items also carry your dates, keywords, bid, and optimization model.
A campaign with no line items will not spend anything. After creating a campaign you are prompted straight into your first line item.
How To Divide Products Between Line Items
Use one line item for many products. You do not need a line item per product.
Do not put the same product in more than one line item within a campaign. Overlapping line items bid against each other for the same impression, which drives up what you pay and scales more slowly, so you may not meet your spend goals.
Group products that belong together, by category, price range, launch status, or the KPI you are managing them against.
To learn more, please see How to Organize Your Campaigns for account structures by brand and category.
Where to Find Sponsored Products in Commerce Max
Everything starts from the Campaigns dashboard, where you both create campaigns and manage the ones you have.
To create your first campaign:
Click +Campaign.
Choose Onsite.
Select Onsite Sponsored Products.
You are then taken through campaign setup and straight into your first line item.