Challenge
Driving growth beyond the lower funnel
adidas, one of the world’s most iconic sports brands, follows a full-funnel strategy designed not only for short-term sales but also for sustainable, long-term growth. In Türkiye, the brand’s ambition is clear: to become the #1 sports brand in the market.
While remarketing has long been a reliable driver of performance, scaling quality traffic from audiences beyond the lower funnel and turning it into measurable business results was a key challenge. adidas Türkiye sought to boost engagement and conversions from mid-lower funnel audiences while maintaining efficiency in a highly competitive retail landscape.
Solution
Leveraging mid-lower funnel performance with Criteo
To meet this challenge, adidas Türkiye partnered with Criteo’s Commerce Growth to build a full-funnel strategy that seamlessly integrates acquisition and retention tactics through an always-on approach.
By splitting campaigns across web and app environments, adidas ensured the best setup for traceability, personalization, efficiency, and relevancy—all while leveraging Criteo’s mid-lower and lower-funnel targeting to reach and convert high-intent audiences.
Using Criteo’s advanced mid-lower targeting segmentation, the brand carefully segmented audiences to minimize overlap and test multiple strategies at the mid-lower level. This precision targeting helped adidas monitor investments efficiently and identify the segments driving the strongest engagement.
On the acquisition side, adidas combined Prospecting audiences, Sports In-market segments, and 1P Lookalikes to expand its reach and attract new shoppers. For retention, a mix of past visitors, buyers, and 1P data helped maintain loyalty and drive repeat purchases.
Criteo’s goal-based optimization models allowed adidas to tailor bidding and creative delivery to each objective—whether app installs, visits, conversions, or revenue—while the engine dynamically selected the best-performing format for every high-intent user.
To capture attention and boost engagement, adidas also incorporated Rich Media formats such as a Color Picker feature, letting users interact directly within the ad by selecting their preferred shoe colors, blending personalization with performance.
As a result, mid-lower funnel campaigns became a true growth driver, bridging product discovery and conversion, and proving that Criteo’s capabilities to deliver measurable impact.
Results
Delivering full-funnel success and measurable business impact
Criteo’s reliable full-funnel solutions, commerce-driven targeting, and audience segmentation capabilities empowered adidas to reach the right shoppers with precision and scale beyond remarketing. Its rich media formats and goal-based optimization further strengthened engagement and return on ad spend.
As a result, adidas Türkiye achieved the following year-over-year wins:
- +173% impressions from mid-lower funnel campaigns
- +33% clicks on mid-lower campaigns
- +87% conversion rate increase on mid-lower campaigns
- +407% ROAS improvement on mid-lower campaigns
- +130% ROAS uplift across total web-focused full-funnel campaigns
By increasing and segmenting their investments in the mid-lower funnel, adidas met their traffic goals while also significantly boosting their lower-funnel KPIs, proving that Criteo supports performance across the full journey.
“In today’s competitive landscape, simply relying on retargeting is no longer enough. Our focus was to unlock growth from audiences beyond the lower funnel. Criteo’s mid-lower funnel capabilities allowed us to scale quality traffic and drive performance uplift across key KPIs like ROAS and conversion rate. By strategically segmenting our investments and leveraging rich media, we turned mid-funnel engagement into measurable results.”
Following this success, adidas Türkiye will continue to deepen its partnership with Criteo, leveraging its mid-lower funnel and full-funnel capabilities as a key growth lever for sustainable media impact.
