Skip to main content
Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Cross-Platform

​
At a glance

A cross-platform gauge that estimates how much of your Criteo retargeting spend is going to shoppers who already know your brand and would very likely have returned on their own through direct or organic channels. Criteo retargets from a cookie pool of recent on-site visitors, and a meaningful slice of that pool is loyal, brand-aware buyers who were coming back anyway. Paying to retarget them is margin you could reclaim. This card joins Criteo’s retargeting clicks against your commerce-platform and analytics signal for repeat and direct-intent customers, and expresses the overlap as a percentage. It is not an argument to switch retargeting off, it is a tool to right-size the retargeting cycle so you are paying for incremental return, not re-buying customers you already had.

​
Calculation

Calculated automatically by joining your Criteo data with your connected commerce platform and analytics signal. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

​
Worked example

A UK speciality-coffee DTC retailer with a strong repeat-purchase base runs Criteo retargeting alongside a healthy direct and organic channel. The gauge estimates how much of branded retargeting click volume overlaps with high direct-intent customers. Account currency GBP. Window is the rolling 30 days to 20 Jun 26. What the pattern tells you:
  1. Roughly 38% of branded retargeting clicks fall in the high-direct-intent cohort. These are loyal buyers who visit directly, search the brand name, and reorder on their own rhythm. Paying a CPC to retarget them is largely re-buying a return that was coming anyway. The gauge crossing the illustrative 30% line is the flag to act.
  2. The loyal cohort converts harder, which is misleading. Notice the repeat cohort converts at a much higher rate (690 on 7,600 clicks) than the first-timers. That high conversion rate is exactly why naive ROAS makes retargeting these users look brilliant, the platform takes credit for a sale that was always going to happen. Incrementality, not raw ROAS, is the right lens here.
  3. The reclaim is margin, not a kill switch. The action is not to switch retargeting off. It is to cap frequency on the loyal cohort, exclude very recent purchasers, and shift the saved budget toward the genuinely incremental first-time and low-intent pool where the ad changes the outcome.
  4. Post-ATT this number tends to rise. As Criteo’s identifiable pool shrinks, retargeting concentrates on the most cookie-stable users, who skew loyal. So a rising gauge can partly reflect identity attrition rather than a new strategy fault. Read it alongside the tracking-decay card.
  5. The honest test is a holdout. The cleanest way to confirm cannibalisation is an incrementality holdout on the loyal cohort: suppress retargeting for a matched group and compare their return rate to the targeted group. If they return at nearly the same rate, the spend on that cohort was cannibalised.
Quick sanity tests:
  • Gauge high + strong direct/organic channel = real cannibalisation, cap frequency on loyalists.
  • Gauge high + weak organic channel = suspect, the overlap may be over-estimated, validate with a holdout.
  • Gauge rising post-ATT = partly identity attrition concentrating on loyal users, not only strategy.
  • Gauge low = retargeting is mostly reaching genuinely incremental users, leave it alone.
  • Holdout return rate near targeted rate = confirmed cannibalisation on that cohort.

​
Sibling cards merchants should reference together

​
Reconciling against Criteo

Where to look in Criteo’s own dashboard:
Criteo Management Centre → Reporting → Performance Report for branded retargeting clicks and conversions, alongside your analytics direct and organic channel reports (for example Google Analytics → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition) and your commerce platform’s repeat-customer view.
Criteo cannot show this card on its own. Criteo sees the clicks and the conversions it served; it has no view of how those same shoppers behave in your direct and organic channels, which is the other half of the cannibalisation question. That cross-platform join, Criteo retargeting against commerce repeat-customer and analytics direct-intent signal, is what Vortex IQ assembles. To sanity-check the gauge manually, compare Criteo’s branded retargeting conversion volume against your analytics direct and branded-organic conversion volume for the same period; a large overlap of the same customers is the cannibalisation this card estimates. Why our number is an estimate, not an exact figure: Cross-connector reconciliation: This card is inherently cross-platform:

​
Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Does a high reading mean I should stop retargeting? No. It means part of your retargeting budget is being spent on customers who would have returned anyway, which is a right-sizing signal, not a kill signal. The action is to cap frequency on the loyal cohort, exclude very recent purchasers, and redirect that budget to genuinely incremental first-time and low-intent shoppers. Retargeting still earns its keep on the incremental pool. Is this an exact measurement of cannibalisation? No, it is a modelled estimate. The only way to prove cannibalisation precisely is an incrementality holdout: suppress retargeting for a matched group and compare their return rate to the targeted group. This gauge is the always-on directional read that tells you when a holdout test is worth running. Treat it as a flag, then validate the suspect cohort with a holdout. Why does the loyal cohort’s high ROAS mislead me? Because ROAS credits the platform with conversions that were always going to happen. Loyal buyers convert at high rates whether or not they see the ad, so retargeting them produces a glittering ROAS that overstates incremental value. The high conversion rate on a retargeting line item is often a cannibalisation tell, not proof the spend is working. My cannibalisation gauge rose after iOS ATT, did my strategy get worse? Not necessarily. ATT shrinks Criteo’s identifiable cookie pool, so retargeting increasingly concentrates on the most cookie-stable users, who tend to be your loyal, brand-aware buyers, the exact cohort most likely to return on their own. So part of a post-ATT rise reflects identity attrition concentrating the audience, not a deliberate strategy change. Read it alongside the tracking-decay card. How do I act on this without throwing away genuine retargeting value? Segment. Keep retargeting full-strength on the incremental pool (first-timers, lapsed customers, low direct-intent visitors) and apply frequency caps plus recent-purchaser exclusions to the loyal cohort. That preserves the part of retargeting that changes outcomes and trims the part that re-buys inevitable returns. Then validate the trimmed cohort with a holdout to confirm you did not cut incremental value. Does brand strength change how I should read this? Yes. A brand with strong direct and organic demand will legitimately show higher cannibalisation than a low-awareness brand, because more of its returners arrive free. A high reading for a strong brand is expected and actionable; the same reading for a low-awareness brand is more surprising and worth validating, because the overlap may be over-estimated.

​
Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Branded Paid Clicks Cannibalising Organic is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Criteo and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.