Criteo


Criteo is a personalized retargeting company that works with Internet retailers to serve personalized online display advertisements to consumers who have previously visited the advertiser's website. The company currently operates in a total of 30 markets around the world and is headquartered in Paris, France. On April 7, 2011, Criteo announced that it hired Greg Coleman as president. Previously, Coleman served as president and chief revenue officer of The Huffington Post and executive vice president of global sales for Yahoo!.
Criteo enables online businesses to follow up visitors who have left their website without making a purchase using personalized banners which aim to drive potential customers back to the business website.

History

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 R&D, and launched its first product in April 2008. In 2010, Criteo opened an office in Silicon Valley in an effort to enhance its profile in the USA.
In 2012, Criteo opened its new headquarters in Paris, France establishing one of the biggest European R&D centers dedicated to predictive advertising. The center will continue to provide central support to more than 30 markets worldwide, on five continents – North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia.
In September 2013, the firm filed for an IPO with US regulators to raise up to $190 million. In October 2017, Criteo appointed Mollie Spilman as COO.

Product

Criteo's product is a form of display advertising. Their personalized 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 basis, meaning that advertisers pay only for the consumers that click on the banner and return to their website. Additional retargeting solutions operate on a cost per thousand impressions or cost per engagement basis.
The most common, and simple form of retargeting is basic static retargeting, where a single static banner is shown to all viewers who have left a particular website. Retargeting specialists then introduced a slightly more complex form of segmented retargeting. This second generation of retargeting enables to display one of a few pre-created messages to lost visitors based on a particular browsing category they fall into.
In September 2010, Criteo debuted its self-service cost-per-click bidding platform that lets advertisers place bids on display retargeting campaigns and see changes and optimize campaigns in real-time.
In May, 2016, Criteo launched its dynamic email retargeting to increase potential reach.
The Criteo Performance Optimization Platform allowed display advertisers and agencies to set retargeting campaigns based on category, and allow advertisers to bid a different CPC per product category. This is similar to Google AdWords, but for display retargeting ads.
Criteo’s platform allowed for cost-per-click bids to be set down to the individual product level. For example, if a retargeted ad displays three products the consumer had browsed on the site, a different cost can be assigned to each product displayed within the single ad.

Funding

Criteo has 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. The company displays over 4 billion banners per month but does not disclose the geographical breakdown for those banners.
In May 2010, Criteo raised a further $7 million of funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing the total to $24 million. WXP

Privacy

In September 2010, Criteo began a campaign 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 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.
In 2019, Privacy International filed a complaint against Criteo, citing that it wouldn't respect the European GDPR.

Achievements

Criteo won the 2010 Web Award for Outstanding Achievement in Web Development. Criteo’s client Boden won the ClickZ Connected Marketing Award for ‘Best Use of Display Advertising’ for its personalized retargeting campaign implemented by Criteo.