Drive discovery
Drive discovery is a GO campaign goal designed to help your brand reach shoppers who have never visited your site before.
Drive discovery focuses on reach by introducing your brand to relevant new audiences at the moment before they even start actively searching for your product. Think of it as building awareness and filling the top of your funnel with fresh, highly interested shoppers.
What does Drive discovery do?
Drive discovery finds shoppers who have no prior history with your brand and shows them your ads across the web, app, and social.
What makes it different is how those audiences are identified. Criteo's AI uses Criteo's commerce data to find shoppers who are not only new to your brand, but also genuinely relevant to it - meaning they're more likely to become future customers, not just a broad group of shoppers who happen to be online.
Your ads run across:
Web and app: Display, video, and native ads
Social: Video and display ads
All channels are activated automatically. Criteo's AI dynamically allocates your budget across them based on where your spend delivers the strongest reach.
How is success measured?
Drive discovery is an upper-funnel goal, so the metrics that matter are different from conversion-focused campaigns.
Primary metrics to track:
Exposed users: The number of unique new-to-brand shoppers who saw your ads
Impressions: The total number of times your ads were shown
When should I use Drive discovery?
Drive discovery is a good fit when:
You want to grow your brand's audience and reach shoppers who don't know you yet
You're launching a new product or entering a new market
Your other campaigns are performing well, but you want to bring fresh audiences into your funnel
You're investing in longer-term business growth, not just immediate sales
Who is Drive discovery best suited for?
Drive discovery works best for businesses that:
Are looking to grow beyond their current audience
Want to build brand awareness in a simple, automated way
Are comfortable measuring success through reach and exposed users rather than direct sales
Already run Acquire new customers or Maximize conversions campaigns and want to add an upper-funnel layer
Business scenarios
Building awareness before a seasonal push
A clothing brand wants to grow its audience before the holiday shopping season. They use Drive discovery to reach relevant new shoppers in the weeks before their sale, so that when they push conversion campaigns later, more shoppers already recognise the brand and are more likely to buy.
Launching in a new market
An online retailer is expanding into a new product category they've never sold before. They use Drive discovery to introduce this new offering to relevant shoppers in their market who've never engaged with their brand, building awareness before they activate any conversion-focused campaigns.
Refreshing a stagnant funnel
An advertiser notices that their Acquire new customers or Maximize conversion campaigns' results are declining over time. They add Drive discovery to bring new, relevant audiences into their funnel, giving their other campaigns new shoppers to work with.
Key benefits
Reaches the right new audiences, not just any new audiences. Criteo's AI uses commerce data to find shoppers who are genuinely relevant to your brand and likely to become future customers.
One campaign, all channels. Web, app, and social are all covered automatically in a single campaign - no manual setup needed per channel.
Full creative coverage. Video, display, and native formats work together to make sure your brand is visible wherever new shoppers spend their time.
Fully automated. Criteo's AI handles targeting, bidding, and budget allocation. You set the budget and launch - the system does the rest.