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 Retention Is Harder to Implement Than New Acquisition
Logically, retention should be any online store's priority if it has existing customers. A customer who bought once has a 40–60% probability of buying again, versus 5–20% for a new user. Yet most advertising budgets direct 90%+ toward new acquisition. Not because owners don't know this, but because retention done well requires more than a remarketing campaign.
Effective retention campaigns require segmenting the customer list by order frequency and value, different messages for one-time buyers versus those who've bought five times, and coordinating channels (email, Meta, Google) to avoid oversaturating the same person. It's a system, not a campaign. To cover all four stages with the right channels, read the omnichannel strategy for online stores: Google + Meta + Email. And to understand which Google Ads campaign type fits each stage, the guide to Google Ads campaign types for eCommerce covers exactly that.
At DAFE Digital we build campaigns aligned with your customers' journey. Right ads for each stage, not the same message repeated endlessly.
Customer journey in eCommerce is rarely linear — users see ads, compare, abandon and return. We structure campaigns by clear stages so budget is allocated where it influences the purchase decision.
Adela Mincea
Marketing Economist · Fondatoare DAFE Digital · Formator ANC
Adela is a Marketing Economist with over 10 years of paid media experience across Europe, the US and Asia. She founded DAFE Digital for one reason: serious Romanian businesses deserve the same paid media expertise companies get in any other market. That's what DAFE Digital does.
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