Notino partners with Criteo to supercharge European retail media capabilities and cross-border advertising reach

Online beauty retailer Notino has officially announced a strategic partnership with global commerce intelligence platform Criteo to overhaul its retail media infrastructure. This collaboration marks a significant pivot in Notino’s business model, transitioning from a traditional e-commerce storefront into a robust, data-driven retail media network. By integrating Criteo’s advanced technology, Notino will power its sponsored products, onsite display advertising, and video marketing formats, effectively providing beauty brands with a sophisticated toolkit to engage consumers throughout the entire purchasing journey.

The move comes at a critical time for the digital beauty sector, which is increasingly reliant on precision marketing as privacy regulations tighten and the reliance on third-party cookies diminishes. By leveraging Notino’s deep pool of first-party data—derived from its extensive 27-market footprint—the retailer aims to provide advertisers with unprecedented granular insights. This transition allows brands to move beyond simple product placement, enabling them to refine campaigns in real-time based on high-fidelity performance data and consumer behavioral patterns.

The Evolution of the European Beauty Landscape

Notino’s expansion into retail media is not an isolated development but rather a symptom of the broader "retail media revolution." As global retail giants like Amazon, Walmart, and Carrefour have successfully demonstrated, turning a storefront into an advertising platform creates a secondary, high-margin revenue stream that is highly attractive to brands seeking direct access to bottom-of-funnel shoppers.

For beauty brands, the European market has historically been fragmented. Managing marketing campaigns across 27 distinct countries—each with varying consumer preferences, regulatory environments, and logistical hurdles—has often resulted in siloed data and inefficient spending. Notino, which has established itself as one of the largest beauty retailers in Europe, is now positioning itself as the solution to this fragmentation. By acting as a "single gateway," Notino provides brands with a unified mechanism to deploy campaigns that can be measured and optimized across the entire continent.

Strategic Timeline and Operational Integration

The partnership between Notino and Criteo was structured in phases, reflecting the complexity of integrating large-scale advertising technology into an existing retail ecosystem.

• Initial Discovery and Planning (Q3 2023 – Q1 2024): Preliminary discussions focused on the technical requirements of Notino’s existing platform. The objective was to determine how Criteo’s retail media suite could best interface with Notino’s proprietary channels without disrupting the customer user experience.
• The Launch of Onsite Capabilities (Q2 2024): The partnership officially went live with the implementation of sponsored product listings and onsite display units. This phase centered on improving the relevancy of product recommendations, ensuring that the ads served to users align with their specific beauty interests and historical search behavior.
• Expansion into Video and Advanced Metrics (Q3 2024 – Ongoing): The focus shifted to video advertising formats, acknowledging the growing importance of visual content in the beauty industry. Simultaneously, the integration of advanced analytics dashboards began, providing brands with the ability to track the ROI of their spend in real-time.
• Future Roadmap (2025 and Beyond): The long-term strategy involves the rollout of offsite advertising, allowing brands to extend their reach to users who are currently outside the Notino ecosystem, as well as the onboarding of offline sales data for true omnichannel measurement.

Data-Driven Value Proposition

The backbone of this partnership is the utilization of Notino’s first-party data. With an ecosystem comprising 40 million customers, Notino possesses a massive dataset that is highly valuable in a post-cookie advertising world. Unlike third-party data, which can be inconsistent or ethically ambiguous, Notino’s data is direct, deterministic, and highly accurate.

For beauty brands, this means the ability to target users based on actual purchase history, search intent, and category loyalty. For instance, a brand launching a new anti-aging serum can target customers who have previously purchased products from the same category or who have exhibited specific skin-care concerns through their onsite searches. According to internal benchmarks from similar retail media networks, this level of targeting can significantly increase conversion rates compared to generic programmatic advertising, as the ads are perceived as helpful recommendations rather than intrusive marketing.

Official Statements and Executive Vision

The leadership at Notino views this development as a foundational shift for the company’s future. Bartosz Kliż, Co-CEO and Chief Growth Officer at Notino, emphasized the strategic necessity of the partnership during the announcement. "For beauty brands, expanding across Europe has always been a complex challenge, but this partnership transforms it into an unprecedented strategic opportunity," Kliż stated. "By combining Criteo’s technology with our proprietary channels and an ecosystem of 40 million customers, we are redefining how brands build their marketing power. Our vision is absolute: Notino is the definitive gateway to Europe."

Šárka Černá, Retail Media Director at Notino, highlighted the tactical focus of the current phase. "Onsite is the first step," Černá noted. "Our focus now is to make it easy for brands to plan, run, and evaluate their campaigns with us. Together with Criteo, we want to build on this with our partners, with offsite and offline data as the areas we intend to explore next."

These statements suggest a long-term commitment to evolving the platform into a full-funnel marketing solution. The partnership is designed to bridge the gap between digital engagement and physical conversion, a challenge that has persisted in the beauty retail sector for years.

The Rise of Full-Funnel Retail Media

The Notino-Criteo alliance is emblematic of the transition from "retail media 1.0" (sponsored search) to "retail media 2.0" (full-funnel advertising). In the earlier iteration, retailers focused primarily on selling space in search results to brands willing to pay for visibility. Today, the scope has expanded to include display advertising, video, and offsite programmatic, all tied together by a single identity-resolution layer.

The implications for the industry are significant:

1. Consolidation of Marketing Budgets: Brands will likely shift portions of their traditional social media and search advertising budgets toward retail media networks, where the conversion path is shorter and more measurable.
2. Omnichannel Attribution: The planned integration of offline sales data is a "holy grail" for many beauty brands. Being able to link an online ad impression to a physical store purchase provides a complete view of marketing efficiency that was previously impossible to calculate.
3. Increased Competition: As Notino scales its offering, it will likely see increased demand for ad inventory, potentially driving up the costs of advertising on the platform while simultaneously increasing the value for brands that successfully utilize the tools to drive market share.

Market Implications and Future Outlook

The retail media sector is currently one of the fastest-growing segments of the digital advertising industry. Market analysts suggest that retail media ad spend will continue to grow at a double-digit compound annual growth rate through 2027. For a company like Notino, which operates in the high-engagement beauty sector, this represents a massive opportunity to diversify revenue beyond product sales.

However, the success of this transition will depend on the platform’s ability to maintain a balance between ad density and user experience. If the site becomes overly cluttered with advertisements, it risks alienating the customer base, which could negatively impact long-term retention. Criteo’s expertise in AI-driven recommendation engines will be crucial in ensuring that advertising remains native and relevant, rather than disruptive.

As the industry moves toward 2025, the focus will undoubtedly shift toward the "offline" component of the partnership. Integrating point-of-sale data from physical retail outlets with online advertising data is the final frontier for many retailers. If Notino succeeds in creating a seamless bridge between these two worlds, it will set a new standard for beauty retail in Europe, further cementing its position as a dominant force in the market.

In conclusion, the partnership between Notino and Criteo is more than just a software integration; it is a fundamental shift in how the retailer interacts with its brand partners and its customers. By leveraging data-driven advertising, Notino is effectively turning its European reach into a high-performance engine for growth, setting the stage for a new era of retail media in the beauty industry. As the company continues to refine its onsite tools and expands into offsite and offline capabilities, the entire European beauty market will be watching to see how this strategic evolution shapes the future of commerce.