This WTF guide, sponsored by Criteo, defines commerce audiences, explains how they are created and describes how advertisers use them to target shoppers at key moments

Connecting with online shoppers is a game of hide-and-seek for marketers. The buying stages — discovery, consideration, decision and purchase — remain intact, but rarely linear. Consumers will move backward and forward along purchase paths littered with abandoned shopping carts and product reviews. A shopper can pass through all the buying stages in seconds with a shoppable ad on social media or take a much slower journey on the open web across multiple locations and devices. 

Even though e-commerce is a fast-moving business with fleeting marketing opportunities, advertisers typically employ traditional demographics and other static characteristics to target consumers. These don’t reveal what a shopper is doing or where they are on the purchase path. They also cause missed opportunities and wasted impressions when ads get served long after purchase. 

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