Criteo

Criteo was founded in Paris, France in 2005 by Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, Franck Le Ouay and Romain Niccoli. Criteo spent the first four years focused on[2] R&D, and launched its first product in April 2008. In 2010, Criteo opened an office in Silicon Valley.[3] In 2012, Criteo opened its new headquarters in Paris, France.[4]

On April 7, 2011, Criteo announced that it hired Greg Coleman as president.[5] Previously, Coleman served as president and chief revenue officer of The Huffington Post and executive vice president of global sales for Yahoo!.[6]

In October 2013, the firm completed an initial public offering (IPO), raising $251 million USD.[7]

On 1 January 2016, Rudelle became the executive chairman, while Eric Eichmann, who was the president and chief operating officer (COO), was promoted to be the chief executive officer.[8] In June 2016, Criteo alleged Steelhouse, a rival ad tech company, that the latter had falsely taken credit for user visits to retailers' web pages in a lawsuit.[9] Steelhouse countersued, alleging Criteo of false advertising and unfair competition.[10] After an injunction requested by Criteo was denied in October 2016, both parties chose to mutually dropped their lawsuits in November 2016.[9] On 4 October 2016, Criteo acquired HookLogic, a retail exchange, ad server and attribution company focused squarely on retailers, strengthening its ecommerce serving capabilities.[11]

In October 2017, Criteo appointed Mollie Spilman as COO.[12]

With the implementation of Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature from Apple's Safari 11 onwards on September 2017,[13] Criteo's revenue was reduced by $25 million in 2017.[14] However, Criteo reportedly was working on “sustainable solution for the long-term” at the end of 2017, and had redesign its "platform architecture" since.[15] Criteo was also impacted by the perception that the General Data Protection Regulation would negatively affect the company.[16]

In April 2018, Rudelle returned as the CEO, with Eichmann being his advisor.[17] Under Rudelle, Criteo slowly transited from a single product (web advertising) to multi-product platform, which included in-app and email advertising.[15][18] Criteo's revenue did not grow in 2018, and was down 1%.[19]

On 19 October 2019, Megan Clarken was appointed as the new CEO, taking over from Rudelle. Clarken would continue Criteo's transformation plan.[19]

Criteo's product is a form of display advertising. Their retargeting solution displays interactive banner advertisements, generated based on the online retail browsing preferences and products for each customer. The solution operates on a pay per click/cost per click (CPC) basis.

In September 2010, Criteo debuted its self-service cost-per-click (CPC) bidding platform that lets advertisers place bids on display retargeting campaigns and see changes and optimize campaigns in real-time.[20]

Criteo secured a total of $17 million in funding, with 3M € in a first institutional round in March 2006 coming from French private equity firm AGF and Elaia Partners, and 9M € in a second round in January 2008 led by Index Ventures.[21]

In May 2010, Criteo raised a further $7 million of funding from Bessemer Venture Partners,.[22]

In September 2010, Criteo began a campaign[23] regarding the use of the popular retargeting and its impact on consumer privacy. The campaign aimed to reassure consumers about personalized retargeting and data-driven marketing tactics.

The company denies it relies on personally identifiable information (PII) and doesn’t track identifiable information, no data is shared with advertisers or publishers and no third-party data used for targeting purposes. Retargeting only uses anonymous information from the merchant’s site.[23]

In 2019, Privacy International filed a complaint against Criteo, citing that it wouldn't respect the European GDPR.[24]

Criteo won the 2010 Web Award for Outstanding Achievement in Web Development.[25]

• Ad Tracking
• Website visitor tracking

• Rudelle, J.B. (2016). They Told Me It Was Impossible: The Manifesto of the Founder of Criteo. Morrisville, North Carolina: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-4834-5777-2.

• Official website