The most common paid advertising model for Romanian eCommerce: all campaigns point to product pages with a purchase objective. Seemingly sound logic. Real result: high acquisition costs, because ads reach people who know nothing about your brand and aren't ready to buy.
What Are the Customer Journey Stages and Which Campaigns Cover Each?
Awareness: Discovery
The user doesn't know your brand exists, or doesn't know your product solves their problem. Campaign objective at this level: visibility and association. Not direct purchase. Channels: Meta Ads (feed, Reels), YouTube, Display.
Consideration: Evaluation
The user knows a solution exists for their need and is comparing options. They actively search, read reviews, compare prices. Channels: Google Search, Google Shopping, Meta retargeting.
Decision: Conversion
The user is ready to buy and choosing between you and a direct competitor. Campaign objective: to be present at exactly this moment with the most relevant offer. Channels: branded Google Search, Shopping, abandoned cart retargeting.
Retention: Recurrence
The customer has already bought. Now you re-convert them. Reactivation cost is 3–5x lower than new acquisition cost. Channels: Meta Ads with existing customer audiences, Google Ads with RLSA lists, email marketing.
Why Does the Customer Journey Matter for Campaign Profitability in Practice?
A customer who watched a YouTube video about your product, clicked a Shopping ad the next day, and purchased after a retargeting ad with a 10% discount actually cost more than last-click attribution shows. But their LTV is higher, because they went through all stages and already have a relationship with the brand.
The last-click attribution model, default in both Google Ads and Meta Ads, attributes all value to the last interaction. This makes awareness campaigns appear unprofitable, even though they feed the entire funnel. If you stop awareness, the new customer pipeline dries up in 2–3 months.
How Do Awareness Campaigns Work and What Metrics Do You Track?
Awareness campaigns aren't measured in ROAS. They're measured in reach, frequency, and recall. In the Romanian market, Meta Ads is the primary channel for eCommerce awareness, because CPM is significantly lower than in Western Europe (€3–€7 vs €12–€20 in Germany).
A format that works well for awareness in Romanian eCommerce: short video (15–30 seconds) showing the product in real use, with a memorable visual element in the first 3 seconds. Not product ads, but content showing the usage context.
Why Is the Consideration Stage Where Most Budget Gets Wasted?
The consideration stage is where Romanian online stores lose the most budget. Why: consideration ads reach people who are actively comparing, so competition is direct and visible. A user searching "men's sport shoes size 10" on Google simultaneously sees your ads and those of your direct competitors.
At the consideration stage, differentiators matter more than at awareness. Price, delivery time, return policy, visible reviews. A Shopping ad with the lowest price on the results page wins the click. A Search ad with the "Free delivery in 24h" extension wins the click over a competitor without this information.
How Do You Recover Abandoned Carts with Retargeting at the Decision Stage?
75–80% of carts in Romanian eCommerce are abandoned. That means 3 out of 4 users who add a product to cart don't complete the order. Each of them went through awareness and consideration and got close to decision. They're the most valuable group to target.
An effective abandoned cart retargeting sequence includes: a reminder ad in the first 24 hours (no discount, just a reminder), an urgency or small discount ad in days 2–4 (5–10% or free shipping), and a social proof ad in days 5–7 (reviews, number of satisfied customers). This sequence recovers on average 15–20% of abandoned carts.
Why Is Retention the Ignored Stage That Makes the Biggest Difference?
A customer who has bought from your store once has a 40–60% probability of buying again, versus a 5–20% probability for a new user. Despite this, most eCommerce advertising budgets in Romania are 90%+ toward new acquisition and under 10% toward reactivation.
Retention campaigns are the most cost-effective in the entire mix. An existing customer list uploaded to Meta Ads or Google Ads as an audience becomes the basis for campaigns with CPL and CPA well below the account average. People who have already bought from you need a reason to return, not a brand introduction from scratch.
An online store that only invests in the decision stage pays the full acquisition price every single time for every customer. A store that works all four stages pays the full price once and recovers it multiple times through retention.
To cover all four customer journey stages with the right channels, read the omnichannel strategy for online stores: Google + Meta + Email. And if you want to understand which Google Ads campaign type fits each stage, the guide to Google Ads campaign types for eCommerce covers exactly that.
A paid media strategy without a clear funnel logic costs more than you think.
At DAFE Digital we don't launch isolated campaigns — we build acquisition systems. We identify the right channels for each stage of the buying decision, allocate budgets with logic and measure what matters: profit, not vanity metrics. If you want to understand what a correctly built paid media strategy would look like for your business, start with a conversation.
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Adela Mincea
Performance Marketing Expert · Marketing Economist · Trainer
Performance marketing specialist with 10+ years of experience running Google Ads, Meta Ads and LinkedIn Ads campaigns for businesses in Romania and internationally.
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