Criteo built its name on retargeting — those ads that follow you around the internet after you’ve browsed a product. Founded in Paris in 2005 by Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, Franck Le Ouay, and Romain Niccoli, the company became one of Europe’s biggest ad-tech success stories, going public on NASDAQ in 2013.
The company’s original engine was remarkably effective. It used machine learning to predict which products a user was most likely to buy and served personalized display ads across thousands of publisher websites. At its peak, Criteo worked with over 22,000 advertisers and reached about 1.4 billion monthly active users.
But the shift away from third-party cookies hit Criteo harder than most. Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox blocked third-party cookies, and Google’s on-again-off-again deprecation plans for Chrome created years of uncertainty. Criteo’s stock dropped from highs above $50 to the low teens as investors questioned the company’s future.
The company has since pivoted hard toward retail media — helping retailers like Target, Best Buy, and Macy’s monetize their first-party shopper data through on-site and off-site advertising. Their Commerce Media Platform connects brands with shoppers across more than 225 retailers globally.
Criteo acquired IPONWEB and its BidSwitch marketplace in 2022 for $380 million, giving it more supply-side capabilities. The company’s annual revenue sits around $2 billion, though the transition from pure retargeting to a broader commerce media model is still a work in progress.
