Built Different: Commerce In-Market Audiences | Criteo

Built Different: Commerce In-Market Audiences

The second in our Built Different series looks at Commerce In‑Market audiences, built from real shopper signals to reach people ready to buy.

Updated on July 17, 2026

Programmatic never really sits still – but if you look closely, you can find a few constants.

One of those is buyers shifting spend to more controlled pipes where data and quality are easier to manage. You can see it in the fact that Private Marketplace (PMP) deals now account for the bulk of programmatic display spend – and that 2025 will see nearly $2 spent on PMPs for every $1 spent on the open exchange.

But for any advertiser to justify this spend, you need the performance to back it up – and that’s where Commerce In-Market audiences can help.

What are Commerce In-Market audiences?

Commerce In-Market audiences are built from real shopping moments – searches, product views, add-to-cart events, purchases, and ad interactions – happening across the open web every day.
At Criteo, we see these moments across 17,000+ ecommerce sites, 200+ retailer partners, and thousands of publishers. Under the hood sits the world’s largest commerce dataset, covering 4.5 billion products and more than $1 trillion in annual transactions, refreshed continuously from 720 million daily active users.

What does all of this mean for you as a buyer? Well, you get audiences based on what people actually do, not what they said they do in a survey three months ago. It’s this freshness, scale, and precision that makes these audiences truly unique – and it’s why we say they’re built different.

Why In-Market audiences?

There are plenty of reasons to give In-Market audiences a slot in your next media plan, but here are three of the best:

Drive new conversions. Reach brand new prospects while they’re in the mood to buy as they research and compare across the exact categories you sell.
Drive more relevance. Use near real-time behavioral signals to present exactly the right offer at exactly the right moment to the people most likely to say ‘yes’.
Drive more performance. Pair In‑Market audiences with lower‑funnel tactics to bring highly qualified users as part of a full-funnel strategy.

What makes In-Market audiences different?

If you’ve been following this series, you’ll know that Commerce Affinity audiences excel at objectives like discovery, consideration, and brand lift.

By contrast, Commerce In-Market audiences are built for action. Here’s what that means in real terms:

Signals that say, “I’m buying.” Product searched, product viewed, added to cart, and purchased – plus ad interactions and relevant content signals when they help predict buying.
100% deterministic. We only put people into an in‑market segment when we’ve observed real, recent commerce activity tied to the product or brand.
Recency by design. Audiences refresh every 24 hours – and in many cases up to every 12 hours – so you can react to intent while it still matters. If someone already bought the thing, we exclude them to keep waste down.
Breadth where it counts. We ingest signals from across the journey – retailers, D2C advertisers, publishers, and even privacy‑safe partner search signals – so your in‑market pool captures comparison shopping wherever it happens.

What you can buy today

With 4 billion products in our network, the thought of building an audience can be daunting.
That’s why we’ve done the hard work for you.

Our In-Market taxonomy contains more than 2000 pre-built segments spanning 4000 targetable product categories and over 25,000 brands. It ranges from broad coverage like “pet supplies” all the way down to granular micro-niches like “bird ladders & perches”.

If you’re curious – and you’ve got some time on your hands – you can see the full In-Market taxonomy here: https://www.criteo.com/In-Market you can see the full In-Market taxonomy here:
And if our off-the-shelf segments don’t quite fit the bill for your campaign, our team can build custom in-market segments for you based on parameters such as:

Product Viewed or Purchased
Category
Brand
Price Sensitivity
Content viewed

Activate your way

Just like Commerce Affinity audiences, there’s no requirement to use Criteo’s demand-side platforms to activate Commerce In-Market audiences.
With our SSP, Commerce Grid, you can use deals-based trading to activate In-Market audiences on 60+ DSPs, including Google DV360 and The Trade Desk.

Here’s a quick rundown of how the process usually works:

You share your brief. Include your objectives, KPIs, geography targets, budget, flight dates, and any brand or category constraints.
We build your segments. We shortlist from our full taxonomy, add any custom logic, and confirm final definitions with you.
We package and deliver. We create deal IDs via Commerce Grid and send them to you to traffic via your DSP of choice. You can run with your existing seat, settings, and reporting.
You go live and optimize. Layer in your usual controls in‑DSP (viewability, frequency, brand safety) and measure with standard reporting tools. We’ll also provide audience insights so you can fine-tune your spend as the campaign goes on.