Criteo to Snowflake: 2 Easy Ways to Move Your Data

You can connect Criteo to Snowflake either automatically using Estuary, the right-time data platform, or manually through CSV exports. Estuary provides a reliable, no-code way to move Criteo advertising data into Snowflake for analytics, while the manual method works for occasional one-time transfers.

Advertising platforms like Criteo generate massive volumes of campaign and audience data every day. Managing and analyzing this data efficiently requires scalable infrastructure and dependable integration. By syncing Criteo data with Snowflake, you can centralize marketing performance metrics, optimize ad spend, and make data-driven decisions faster.

This guide explains both approaches in detail, helping you choose the method that fits your business best.

Criteo Overview

Criteo is a leading digital advertising platform that helps businesses deliver personalized ads and improve marketing performance through advanced machine learning. It powers targeted advertising for over 750 million daily active users by analyzing vast datasets across web, mobile, and app environments.

The platform enables advertisers to connect with potential customers through real-time audience insights, predictive bidding, and automated campaign optimization. Criteo supports marketers across industries including retail, travel, and finance, helping them drive measurable conversions and revenue growth.

Key Features of Criteo:

• Audience Targeting: Use AI-driven models to reach customers who are most likely to engage or convert.
• Cross-Device Targeting: Deliver consistent ad experiences across devices including desktop, mobile, and tablets.
• Global Reach: Access a vast publisher network that spans regions and industries, helping brands expand audience coverage.
• Personalization: Serve personalized ads based on user behavior, interests, and browsing history.
• Data Privacy and Security: Compliant with GDPR and other data protection standards to ensure secure data handling.

Estuary’s Criteo connector captures data from Criteo’s API through scheduled batch syncs, including resources such as Ad Sets, Advertisers, Campaigns, Audiences, and performance Reports. This allows you to collect detailed advertising and performance metrics at the cadence that fits your business, whether daily, hourly, or on-demand, and move them into Snowflake for analytics and reporting.

Snowflake Overview

Snowflake is a cloud-native data warehousing and analytics platform designed for scalability, flexibility, and performance. It allows businesses to store and analyze massive volumes of structured and semi-structured data without managing infrastructure manually.

Unlike traditional databases, Snowflake separates compute and storage, allowing each to scale independently. This architecture ensures you can handle variable workloads efficiently, supporting everything from real-time reporting to machine learning pipelines while keeping costs predictable.

Key Features of Snowflake:

• Fully Managed Service: Snowflake handles infrastructure provisioning, maintenance, and optimization automatically so that teams can focus on analytics.
• Automatic Query Caching: Frequently executed queries are cached for faster performance and reduced compute costs.
• Zero Copy Cloning: Create a copy of databases or tables instantly without duplicating storage, enabling faster testing and experimentation.
• Time Travel: Restore data to a specific point in the past to recover from accidental changes or deletions.
• Secure Data Sharing: Share governed datasets across teams or partners without duplicating data, improving collaboration and efficiency.

Integrating Snowflake with Criteo allows marketing teams to combine advertising metrics, audience data, and campaign insights in one centralized platform for deeper analysis and smarter decision-making.

Criteo to Snowflake Data Migration Methods

In this guide, we will explore two easy ways for loading data from Criteo to Snowflake.  

• The Automated Method: Connect Criteo to Snowflake using no-code tools like Estuary Flow
  
• The Manual Method: Load data from Criteo to Snowflake using CSV files

Method 1: Connect Criteo to Snowflake Using Estuary

The most efficient way to connect Criteo and Snowflake is by using Estuary, the right-time data platform that unifies CDC, batch, and streaming in one dependable system. Estuary allows you to automate data movement from Criteo to Snowflake using a no-code interface, ensuring your advertising data is always up to date for reporting and analytics.

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:

• An Estuary account
• Criteo credentials including Client ID, Client Secret, and one or more Advertiser IDs
• A Snowflake account with:
  • A target database
  • A schema within that database
  • A virtual warehouse
  • A role with appropriate privileges for database, schema, and warehouse access
• Your Snowflake host URL, such as orgname-accountname.snowflakecomputing.com

Step 1: Set Up the Criteo Source Connection

• Register for free or sign in to your Estuary account and click on the Sources option on the left-side pane of the dashboard.

• Click on + NEW CAPTURE to start with the set up of your data source connection.

• In the Search connectors box, search for Criteo and click on its Capture button.

• On the Criteo connector page, provide a unique Name for the capture.
• On the connector setup page, fill in the following details:
  • Client ID: Your Criteo API client ID
  • Client Secret: Your Criteo API client secret
  • Advertiser IDs: One or more advertiser IDs to capture data from
  • Start Date: The earliest date from which you want to begin reading data (format: YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00.000Z)

• Now click on the NEXT, followed by SAVE AND PUBLISH.

Once configured, Estuary will automatically detect and capture data from the following Criteo API resources:

• Ad Sets
• Advertisers
• Audiences
• Campaigns (including Legacy and Preview versions)
• Categories (Legacy)
• Reports (customizable based on dimensions and metrics)

Estuary performs scheduled batch syncs for Criteo data, allowing you to control the frequency of data retrieval. You can schedule syncs daily, hourly, or at another interval that matches your analytics needs.

Step 2: Set Up the Data Destination

After setting up the Criteo source, you can connect Snowflake as the destination.

• From the dashboard, click Materialize Collections (which appears after publishing your capture) or navigate to Destinations and select New Materialization.

• In the search field, type Snowflake and choose the connector.

• On the setup page, provide the following details:
  • Host (Account URL): Example orgname-accountname.snowflakecomputing.com
  • Database: The target database where data will be stored
  • Schema: The schema within your Snowflake database
  • Warehouse: The compute warehouse for running queries
  • Role: The user role with required privileges

Authentication

Snowflake now requires key-pair (JWT) authentication for secure connectivity.

To configure this:

• Generate an RSA key pair locally:

plaintext
openssl genrsa 2048 | openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -inform PEM -out rsa_key.p8 -nocrypt  
openssl rsa -in rsa_key.p8 -pubout -out rsa_key.pub

• Assign the public key to your Snowflake user:

plaintext
ALTER USER ESTUARY_USER SET RSA_PUBLIC_KEY='MIIBIjANBgkqh...';

• Copy the private key into Estuary’s Snowflake connector under Private Key.

This authentication method enables secure communication and supports Snowpipe Streaming for efficient data loading.

• Choose the source collections from your Criteo capture.
• Optionally enable Delta Updates for faster, cost-effective incremental loads.
• Click Next, then Save and Publish to begin materializing your Criteo data into Snowflake.

Step 3: Verify and Monitor the Integration

After both connectors are active, Estuary begins syncing Criteo data to Snowflake based on your chosen schedule.
You can monitor pipeline health, data freshness, and sync statistics directly in the Estuary dashboard.

To manage Snowflake costs, configure auto-suspend on your warehouse to pause compute after one minute of inactivity:

plaintext
ALTER WAREHOUSE ESTUARY_WH SET AUTO_SUSPEND = 60;

For more detailed information, refer to the Estuary Flow’s documentation on

• How to create a Data Flow
• Snowflake Destination Connector

Benefits of Using Estuary

• Unified Data Movement: Manage batch and CDC pipelines in one dependable platform.
• Right-Time Performance: Control how frequently data moves to balance freshness and cost.
• Scalable and Secure: Handles growing advertising data volumes with built-in encryption and exactly-once reliability.
• No-Code Setup: Configure your entire pipeline in minutes without writing custom scripts.
• Low-Latency Loading: Use Snowpipe Streaming to minimize delay between Criteo updates and Snowflake availability.

Simplify your marketing data workflow with Estuary, the right-time data platform trusted by data teams for dependable integrations.

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Method 2: Load Data From Criteo to Snowflake Using CSV Files

This method involves two simple steps: extracting data from Criteo as CSV and loading it into Snowflake.

Step 1: Exporting Data from Criteo as CSV Files

• Login to your Criteo account and navigate to the data you want to export. Now click on the built-in Export Function at the top right corner of the window.

Image Source

• In the Share and Export window, click on the CSV option in the Download Report section.

Image Source

Step 2: Loading Data into Snowflake

• Login to your Snowflake account and create a stage using the following command.

plaintext
create or replace stage customers_stage;

• Create a file format using the command FILE FORMAT to define the format of the file to be imported.

plaintext
create or replace file format customers_format type = 'csv' field_delimiter = ' , ' ;

• Upload your CSV file from your local system to a Snowflake stage using the PUT command. Execute the appropriate command in your SnowSQL client based on your operating system.

Windows

plaintext
put file://C:\test\Enterprises.csv @customers_stage;

Linux/Mac

plaintext
put file:///tmp/data/Enterprises.csv @customers_stage;

• You must create a target table within the Snowflake database with the same structure as the CSV file. Consider the following example:

plaintext
create or replace table customers (
   id integer,
   name varchar (100),
   location varchar(100)
)

• Use the COPY INTO command to move data from a Snowflake stage into a Snowflake database table.

plaintext
copy into test.customers from @customers_stage;

These steps will load data from Criteo to Snowflake successfully. However, it’s important to note that this method also has some limitations, including:

• Time-Consuming: The manual approach requires downloading Criteo data into a CSV file and uploading it to Snowflake. This process can be time-consuming, especially while handling large volumes of data.
• Security Concerns: Moving data from Criteo to Snowflake using CSV files without proper security measures can pose significant risks, particularly when handling sensitive data. It is crucial to implement adequate measures to ensure data protection throughout the migration process.
• Real-Time Data Synchronization: Using the CSV files method requires intervention and execution of data transfers at regular intervals, leading to delays in data updates. Any changes made in Criteo will not be immediately reflected in Snowflake.

Get Integrated

Integrating Criteo with Snowflake allows you to combine advertising performance data with other business metrics to gain deeper insights, optimize ad campaigns, and improve ROI. Snowflake’s scalability and advanced analytics capabilities make it the ideal platform for centralizing and analyzing large volumes of marketing data.

While the manual CSV export method can work for simple, one-time transfers, it is limited by time, security, and the lack of data freshness. In contrast, Estuary offers a dependable, no-code solution for automated Criteo to Snowflake integration. With its batch-based Criteo connector and secure Snowflake materialization, Estuary ensures that your campaign and performance data are always analytics-ready at the cadence you choose.

Estuary is the right-time data platform that replaces fragmented batch, CDC, and streaming tools with one dependable system. Teams use Estuary to move data at the cadence they choose, whether sub-second, near real-time, or batch, with predictable pricing and deployment flexibility across SaaS, BYOC, or private environments.

Start your free Estuary account today to build your first Criteo to Snowflake pipeline and turn your advertising data into actionable insights.

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