The advertising technology company that became synonymous with those shoes that follow you around the internet is having what might be called a moment of vindication.
Criteo reported that advertisers spent $1 billion on its platform in the first quarter, an increase of 8 percent from the same period a year ago. For a company that has spent the better part of a decade being told that its core business was about to be legislated, regulated or simply browsed out of existence, the results suggest a certain resilience.
The Paris-based company, which went public in 2013 and has weathered successive waves of privacy regulation, cookie deprecation threats and the general sense among digital prognosticators that behavioral targeting was living on borrowed time, appears to have found its footing in a landscape that looks rather different from the one it entered. (Whether the shoes ever actually stop following you is a question for another column.)
The quarterly figure represents the gross amount that advertisers committed to Criteo's various products, which have expanded well beyond the retargeting business that made the company's name — and its reputation, for better or worse, among consumers who wondered why that luggage set was appearing on every website they visited for six weeks.
In recent years, Criteo has attempted to reposition itself as a commerce media company, a phrase that would have meant nothing a decade ago and now means, roughly, that retailers are selling advertising space on their own properties and Criteo would like to help them do so.
The 8 percent growth rate is not the sort of figure that causes investment bankers to spill their coffee, but in an advertising technology sector that has seen its share of implosions, corrections and existential crises, steady growth has its own appeal.
The shoes, presumably, continue their vigil.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Advertisers Spent $1 Billion on Criteo in Q1, Up 8% Year-Over-Year"