By Ronan Shields • February 5, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
Criteo’s latest earnings call represented the passing of the baton between outgoing chief executive Megan Clarken, and its incoming CEO Michael Komasinkski, with the former of the pair underlining the overhaul that marked her four-year term of office.
“We no longer plan our business around the deprecation of third-party cookies,” said Clarken, later noting how ad retargeting represented 40% of its business, as it exited 2024, compared to 2020, when she first took the reins.
The fortunes of Criteo, a pioneer of ad retargeting based on the use of third-party cookies, are widely regarded as a proxy for how the industry is faring now such audience targeting tools are losing their utility as a result of privacy expectations around the globe.
The impact of Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention in Safari predated Clarke’s arrival, but it was Google’s confirmation of the planned deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome soon after her arrival that fundamentally altered the digital advertising landscape, Criteo’s strategic moves since.
That impact was demonstrated earlier today when Criteo posted revenues of $553 million for the three months to December 31 to today, representing a decline of 2% year-on-year, while full-year revenue was $1.9 billion, equating to a 1% decline. Albeit, company leadership highlighted how profit margins improved for both reporting periods.
Furthermore, retail media revenues — the flagship priority of Clarken’s time in office, including significant non-organic growth activity — grew 25% year-over-year in 2024. Meanwhile its more traditional performance media business grew 8% year-over-year at constant currency during the same period, albeit there was a notable 6% decrease during the closing quarter of the year.
Looking forward, the company leadership forecast that revenue growth would be in the “mid-single-digit growth,” with first quarter revenue guidance in the range of $256 million-to-$260 million.
One of Criteo’s major strategic shifts in the last four years has been its move from traditional ad retargeting to establishing itself as a “commerce media platform” focusing on retail media.
The pivot was aimed to strengthening relationships with agency holding groups and included major acquisitions, such as retail media tech firm Mabaya and ad tech company IPONWEB for $380 million. This move bolstered Criteo’s capabilities, particularly in providing solutions that integrate with agencies preferred demand-side platforms.
Criteo’s burgeoning relationship with holding company agencies “at a platform level” was a key message company executives tried to impress upon financial analysts, with some observing how its choice of new CEO former Dentsu Americas chief Komasinski as a ploy to further its relationship with such powerbrokers.
However, it also faces stiff competition from Amazon, which is aggressively expanding its advertising business and targeting Madison Avenue’s top media buyers with its Retail Ads Service posing a direct threat to Criteo’s retail media ambitions, according to some.
Criteo executives can counter with how it has brokered a significant relationship with Microsoft Advertising, itself a significant player in the Big Tech-dominated ad tech landscape, but another major area of continuity between Clarken and Komasinski’s tenure (he takes over on Feb. 16) will be the transition to a cookie-less world. This sector of the industry landscape is as uncertain as ever, especially following Google’s announcement/non-announcement in this regard at the 2025 IAB annual leadership meeting, although, Criteo’s engineering teams will continue to be a prominent voice in any Privacy Sandbox third-party discussions.
However, given the ongoing wave of mergers and acquisitions in the sector, not to mention ongoing chatter regarding Criteo as a potential target of a bigger fish in the pond, some wonder if the sale of Criteo to Microsoft could be the denouement of Criteo’s time on the public markets and Microsoft’s own resurgent ambitions in adland.
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