What are CDPs?
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a centralized system that collects, unifies, and activates customer data from multiple sources to build comprehensive, real-time customer profiles. These profiles can be leveraged across marketing and advertising technologies to deliver more personalized experiences.
Criteo collaborates with leading CDPs to help you activate customer data for personalized, performance-driven advertising. These integrations enable you to seamlessly:
Transition from data collection to campaign execution, leveraging rich customer insights for better targeting and ROI.
Onboard customer data, enabling improved targeting and enhanced personalization for your campaigns.
A CDP's primary role is to bridge the gap between data storage and activation, enabling you to deliver personalized experiences at scale. They sit on top of CRM systems, which store detailed customer relationship data, including personal identifiers (PII), attributes, interactions, and loyalty information. They take this rich CRM data and:
Organize it into usable audience segments.
Deploy it to marketing and ad tech platforms.
Enable real-time targeting and measurement.
They also integrate with Data Warehouses (which store raw, unsegmented data) and Data Management Platforms (DMPs) (which segment anonymized data for audience building), creating a seamless flow from data collection to activation.
Comparing OneTag and CDP Integrations
Understanding the differences between OneTag and CDP Integrations is key to optimizing your data strategy with Criteo. Both approaches help activate audiences, but they work in fundamentally different ways.
Feature | OneTag | CDP |
Source of Data | Advertiser site interactions | Any marketing channel (site, email, loyalty, etc.) |
Data Composition | Addressable IDs + behaviors | Addressable IDs only (no behaviors) |
Audience Build | Criteo builds audiences using IDs + behaviors | Advertiser builds audience and sends to Criteo |
Data Age | Past 13 months | Lifetime customer data from CRM |
Addressability | Compatible with the entire strategy | Compatible with First-Party Data & Closed Environments |
How are the audiences built?
OneTag
Data Collection: Captures site/app interactions (visitors, buyers, cart abandoners).
Signals: Includes addressable IDs (HEM, CRMID, cookies) and intent data (shopping behaviors).
Audience Creation: Criteo uses these signals + AI + $1T e-commerce data to build audiences.
Activation: Serves retargeting, retention, or acquisition campaigns across the open internet and social (retargeting only).
CDP
Data Collection: Organizes every customer touchpoint (social, email, SMS, loyalty, offline purchases).
Signals: Sends Email Lists, User Identifier Lists (IDFA, AAID, Ramp ID, or Criteo Cookie ID), or Phone Numbers - no behavioral or intent data.
Audience Creation: Advertiser builds audiences in CDP; Criteo matches IDs via Identity Graph.
Activation: Serves campaigns across the open internet.
Benefits of using a CDP with Criteo
By leveraging a CDP, you can improve your campaigns:
Onboard CRM audiences to enhance the scale and scope of your retention campaigns.
If you have offline sales, use your CDP integrations to ingest this data into your Criteo environment for holistic attribution.
Optimize campaigns with richer insights to drive stronger performance.
Activate your audience with confidence – your first-party data stays safe and completely under your control with Criteo.
Improves targeting and performance by feeding Criteo higher-quality customer data, supporting both cookieless solutions and AI-driven optimization.
When should you use a CDP audience?
To enhance OneTag with richer first-party data: CDP audiences allow you to complement OneTag by leveraging incremental first-party data, giving you deeper insights and more precise targeting.
For re-engaging lapsed buyers: Unlike standard solutions that store data for only 13 months, CDPs maintain historical data beyond that window. This makes them ideal for reconnecting with customers who haven’t purchased in a while.
As part of a unified omnichannel strategy: CDPs enable consistent audience activation across multiple channels, ensuring a seamless and personalized experience for your customers wherever they interact with your brand.
To optimize performance through testing: Always test CDP audiences alongside Criteo audiences. Comparing performance helps identify the most effective combinations and maximize campaign results.
How to enable CDP integration?
Please reach out to your Criteo representative for help with integrating your Criteo account with CDP platforms. You can also find step-by-step instructions for each CDP below.
We are integrated with ~40 CDPs, including major players like LiveRamp, Tealium, Amperity, Bluecore, Blueshift, Klaviyo, Lotame, and more.
Click the button below to access detailed support documentation and explore key information for every CDP.