Marktplaats pairs acquisition and retargeting solutions to maximize traffic and new active users growth

The challenge: Expanding audience reach

Marktplaats, part of Adevinta, is the largest online marketplace in the Netherlands for private and business sellers of second-hand and new products. With the objective of expanding their audience reach, Marktplaats decided to expand their existing retargeting efforts and create a full-funnel strategy together with Criteo for their mobility vertical.

By launching an acquisition campaign, Marktplaats aimed to reach new customers interested in cars, who could later be retargeted via lower-funnel tactics.

The solution: Strategic audience targeting

Marktplaats began to test prospecting and keyword targeting with Criteo in 2023 as their first step towards an always-on acquisition strategy, where the main objective was to deliver more relevant ads and reach new users. Based on the testing results, Marktplaats and Criteo agreed that the most relevant audience for their acquisition campaign should comprise of users who were in-market for cars and had not visited the platform before.

Marktplaats further tailored their targeting approach by focusing on users who were in-market for specific car brands based on the most popular car brands on the platform by total listings.

Criteo helped Marktplaats implement significant optimization strategies to finetune their reach by including lapsed users who had not visited the platform within a longer timeframe, as well as a custom behavioral audience of users who had visited automotive domains in the Netherlands. The effect of these changes was reducing the CPL (cost x leads) by 93% and generating x18 times the total amount of leads quarter on quarter.

The results: Driving traffic and acquisition

By pairing acquisition campaigns with Marktplaats’ existing retargeting strategy, the platform observed a year-over-year increase in leads and clicks. The expanded customer growth approach proved to be also cost-effective, significantly decreasing the year-over-year cost per lead.

The full-funnel strategy also benefited the retargeting campaigns, contributing to a 4.5% uplift in onsite visitors. The upper and lower funnel components of the plan worked in tandem, with 54% of clickers from the upper funnel campaign getting retargeted via a lower funnel campaign. This led to 5.1% of the lower funnel conversions coming from post-click visitors that were originally driven to the website via the upper funnel campaign.

“All the possibilities Criteo offers across audiences and creatives allow us to reach the right audiences, at the right time, in the right places. In addition, and just as importantly, the account managers helped us with every step, proactively supporting us with new ideas, tests, and possibilities — adapted to our brand and goals,” shared Miriam Parache, Performance Marketing Specialist at Marktplaats.