Cart recovery ads

Cart recovery in Active Reach has two surfaces working together: the organic side (a WhatsApp / SMS / email follow-up from a journey — see automations/cart-recovery) and the paid side (this page — retargeting ads that complete the recovery for shoppers who don’t respond to organic).

The two share the same audience and suppression rules, so a shopper never gets both at the same time.

The mixed-domain playbook


Cart abandoned
    │
    ├─► (0–24h) Organic — WhatsApp + email follow-up
    │           with payment link to complete
    │
    ├─► (24–48h) Organic — second touch on a different channel
    │
    └─► (48h+ ) Paid — Meta DPA + Google Shopping
                with payment link OR storefront redirect

(any point)  Conversion fires → suppression removes from all legs

Every leg is suppression-aware. The moment a purchase fires, the shopper drops from the cascade and from any pending organic touches.

Three-layer payment-link defense

Cart-recovery ads include a payment link that lets the shopper complete the order without re-entering checkout. Because the link is generated at ad-render time and lives on for hours / days, Active Reach has three layers of defence to ensure it always works:

Layer	What it does	Where
Layer 1 — Engine auto-inject	The recovery engine auto-injects `{{generated.payment_link}}` into every cart-recovery template that needs it, even if the operator didn’t explicitly add the placeholder	Recovery engine
Layer 2 — DAG generator auto-emit	The AI playbook generator emits the payment-link node for cart-recovery intents whenever the journey graph is created	DAG generator
Layer 3 — UI confirmation badge	The drawer UI shows a confirmation badge (“payment link will be auto-generated”) when the operator drafts a cart-recovery journey, surfacing the behaviour explicitly	Drawer UI

Result: cart-recovery ads always carry a working link, even if a layer above failed.

Setting up paid cart recovery

Activate the cart-recovery playbook

Go to Automations → Discover → Cart recovery (paid + organic). Click Activate. The playbook ships pre-configured with:

An abandoned-cart segment definition
An organic leg (WhatsApp + email)
A paid leg (Meta DPA + Google Shopping)
Suppression rule fired by transaction.purchase

Connect your catalog

Cart recovery requires a product catalog to render dynamic ads. Connect at Connected Products → Catalog source if you haven’t (see DPA & Shopping).

Connect Meta and Google ad accounts

The paid leg needs at least one connected ad account. Connect at Ads → Settings → Ad accounts.

Configure the recovery window

Default windows:

Organic touches: 0–48h after abandonment
Paid touches: 48h–7d after abandonment

You can shorten or extend at Cart recovery → Settings → Recovery window.

Set the payment-link policy

Choose how the payment link behaves:

Always include (default) — the link is generated for every shopper, even those without a saved payment method
Returning shoppers only — link only for shoppers with a saved card, falling back to a storefront redirect for new ones
Link price floor — only generate links for carts above N currency units

Approve

The playbook starts in Draft mode. Click Approve to go live. The first ad creative will render within ~30 minutes after enough abandoners accumulate.

How creative is built

Each ad creative is generated per shopper, from the catalog:

Product image — the specific item(s) the shopper abandoned
Headline — pulled from your creative profile (see Creative profiles)
CTA — “Complete my order” with the payment link embedded
Price — current price + any active discount

For shoppers who abandoned multi-item carts, Meta DPA Collection renders a carousel; Google Shopping renders the highest-value item with a price showcase.

Measurement

The cart-recovery dashboard at Ads → Cart recovery shows:

Recoveries by leg — organic vs paid attribution
Average recovery latency — how long after abandonment the purchase happened
Net incremental revenue — using the holdout configured in Incrementality
Payment-link conversion rate — what % of shoppers who clicked through actually completed

Use the dashboard to tune the recovery window and channel mix.

Suppression across legs

The same suppression rule covers organic and paid:

Event	Action
`transaction.purchase` (for the abandoned items)	Suppress from every pending leg within 5 minutes
Customer opts out of marketing	Suppress from organic legs; paid legs continue (until conversion or window expires)
Customer marks message as spam	Suppress from both organic and paid legs immediately

What’s next

Automations → cart recovery — the organic-side flow
Retargeting cascade — the underlying multi-platform mechanic
DPA & Shopping — how the catalog feeds the creative
Conversions API — how the recovery is reported back