Overview of Conversion Events

Conversion Events are specific actions on your website or app that you track, report on, and use as objective goals in your campaigns. While completed purchases remain supported, Conversion Events expand optimization beyond final sales to include mid-funnel engagement and high-value lead actions, such as:  

• Submitting a lead form 

• Starting a trial 

• Adding a product to cart 

They are captured through OneTag, which sends event data to Criteo when a user completes one of these actions, allowing the system to validate the event and use it as a signal for optimization. By using Conversion Events, you can measure performance based on real business results and enable campaigns to automatically adjust delivery and bidding to drive more of the outcomes that matter most to you. 

What are the supported event types? 

Conversion Events are grouped into three categories based on the stage of the user journey. The supported conversions events are as follows: 

• Engagement Events – It signals mid-funnel interest and product consideration. The supported engagement events are as follows:

  • Listing or Category Page View - Tracks visits to category listing pages 

  • Product Page View - Tracks visits to product pages 

  • Search - Tracks user search interactions (Example: hotel or flight search) 

  • Add to Cart - Tracks when the user adds products to basket 

  • View Basket - Tracks basket views 

• Lead Events - These capture high-value non-sale actions that indicate a user intends to engage with a business. Supported lead events include: 

  • Signup - Account or registration creation 

  • Subscribe – Start of a paid subscription 

  • Submit Form - Form submissions for contact or service inquiry 

  • Contact - Clicks or submissions to a phone, message, email or chat request 

  • Start Trial – Trial initiated 

  • Schedule - Bookings or appointments (Example: Viewings and meetings) 

  • ClickOut - Clicks and redirects to an external site 

  • Other - User-defined actions or uncategorized 

• Sale Events – It signals final purchase or booking confirmation. The supported sale events include: 

  • Purchase - Completed sale or booking (Example: shoes, flight booked, etc.) 

When to use Conversion Events? 

You can use different Conversion Event types depending on your goals: 

• Engagement events: Useful for long consideration cycles where early intent signals matter 

• Lead events: Best for non‑ecommerce businesses where conversions happen outside the site 

• Sale events: Use when optimizing for revenue or ROAS 

Selecting the correct event type ensures optimization aligns with meaningful outcomes instead of surface‑level activity. 

What are the recommended use cases? 

Conversion Events allow you to track and optimize toward meaningful actions beyond the standard Sale conversion. This helps improve signal quality, campaign efficiency, and visibility across the full funnel.

• Acquisition Optimization 

  Optimize acquisition campaigns to target mid-funnel intent signals, rather than focusing on visits or final sales. This helps attract higher-quality users earlier in their journey.

• Lead Generation 

  Optimize campaigns to drive lead actions, building first-party data and generating qualified prospects.

• Secondary KPI for Retargeting 

  Use mid-funnel signals as optimization goals when sales volume is too low for stable learning. These signals can indicate strong purchase intent even if the final conversion hasn’t happened yet.

What are the supported Bid Strategies? 

Conversion Events currently support only the following bid strategies: 

• Budget 

• MaxCPC 

 For more information on bid strategies, click here.

Why use Conversion Events? 

Conversion Events enable outcome-based optimization and optimize campaigns toward the actions that directly impact your business goals. By using conversion events, you can: 

• Optimize campaigns toward meaningful actions like signups, searches, subscribe in addition to purchases 

• Measure performance based on metrics tied to your selected event, such as cost per conversion event or conversion event conversion rate 

• Improve bidding and delivery using validated conversion signals 

• Gain visibility into mid-funnel and lead actions that influence final conversions 

• Align campaign performance with your true business KPIs

How to set up Conversion Events? 

To set up conversion events: 

• Ensure that your event is implemented and passed via OneTag/ S2S.

• Go to the Events Tracking Page from the left navigation panel 

• In the Event Status section, go to the Objective column and use the Activate as objective toggle button to activate an Event as an objective 

• Now, when you create a new Adset, the Event turned on as an objective will be listed under the Objective section for you to choose 

• While editing an existing ad set, the Events you activated as objectives will also be visible for you to choose from