Criteo is a global commerce media company that enables marketers and media owners to drive better commerce outcomes. Its Commerce Media Platform connects thousands of marketers and media owners to deliver richer consumer experiences from product discovery to purchase. By powering trusted and impactful advertising, Criteo said that it supports an open internet that encourages discovery, innovation, and choice.
Earlier this year it achieved its first-ever accreditation by the Media Rating Council (MRC) for display rendered impression and click advertising metrics across desktop, mobile web, and mobile in-app environments for Onsite Sponsored Products and Onsite Display Ads on its enterprise retail media platforms, Commerce Max and Commerce Yield. As part of this accreditation, Criteo was evaluated against MRC’s guidelines for detecting and filtering General Invalid Traffic (GIVT), which provides enhanced assurance that marketers can trust the commerce outcomes driven on the Criteo platform.
Medianews4u.com caught up with Criteo country head India Medhavi Singh to find out more on the company.
Could you talk about Criteo’s expansion plans for India? Is it a top-three market?
India holds significant strategic importance for Criteo, as evidenced by our continuous investment since establishing operations in 2016. We work closely with clients and partners in the e-commerce and retail sectors, recognising the immense potential of the Indian market. As more consumers in India embrace digital channels for their shopping needs, it becomes crucial for brands and retailers to establish a strong presence in the commerce media space.
Our expansion plans in India focus on investing across the entire marketing funnel. Our commerce media platform supports brands, marketers, and media owners in achieving diverse commerce objectives, from driving awareness and acquiring new customers to retaining existing ones and effective retargeting strategies. In the retail media sector, we collaborate with large players, assisting them in developing robust monetization strategies. For example, our partnership with Flipkart and Swiggy helps them monetise their offsite inventory, showcasing our commitment to fostering growth and innovation in the retail media landscape. Additionally, we have also partnered with organisations like GroupM and Tyroo to expand our global and regional penetration and capabilities in the advertising space.
Our overarching strategy emphasizes an omnichannel approach, which is particularly vital given India’s evolving retail landscape. As global brands establish their presence and digital-first businesses venture into physical retail, adapting to this dynamic ecosystem is paramount. We are dedicated to supporting Indian businesses in navigating these changes and leveraging the full potential of omnichannel strategies to drive success in the competitive Indian market.
Do brands who adopt an omnichannel marketing strategy usually win?
Adopting an omnichannel marketing strategy can significantly impact a brand’s success. Omnishopping, which focuses on providing a seamless buying experience across various devices and channels, is crucial in today’s consumer landscape, as the digital and physical advertising worlds come together to provide more value to consumers. Businesses that leverage deterministic matching techniques to connect users across devices and environments ensure a consistent and personalized experience, leading to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
One of the key benefits of an omnichannel approach is increased customer spending. Studies, like the one from Harvard Business Review, reveal that omnichannel shoppers tend to spend more, both in-store and online, compared to those who interact with a business through a single channel. Additionally, omnichannel shoppers demonstrate higher levels of loyalty, as they are more likely to return and make repeat purchases. This loyalty translates into increased foot traffic for physical stores and higher engagement in online channels, creating a virtuous cycle of customer engagement and revenue growth.
How is Criteo finetuning its business model?
Criteo has evolved into our next chapter as a multi-solution Commerce Media Platform offering, and strategically refining our business model amidst the burgeoning retail media landscape, poised as a frontrunner in a pivotal advertising era akin to the rise of search and social platforms. Our Commerce Media Platform is a suite of products, including our Retail Media solution, that activates the world’s largest set of commerce data to help marketers and media owners reach and monetize audiences and drive commerce outcomes. Our retail media solution connects seamlessly into the larger Commerce Media Platform via first-party datasets, which allows us to provide superior targeting everywhere that we have supplied. By combining our publisher network with the first-party datasets from our retail media network, we’re creating a mesh of connections between buyers and sellers across the open internet. Providing a holistic omnichannel retail media strategy with online and in-store capabilities, Criteo empowers retailers to own their entire retail media ecosystems.
Looking forward to 2024, Criteo remains a pioneer in retail media’s trajectory, focusing on scaling retailers and boosting platform demand, complemented by strategic leadership appointments. Industry forecasts, including GroupM’s prediction of retail media outpacing combined linear and connected TV spend by 2028, underscore this market’s rapid ascent. Criteo’s research reinforces this optimism, with a significant majority of brands and agencies anticipating increased investment and recognizing retail media’s superior sales impact compared to traditional channels.
Could you talk about the partnership with Flipkart and how it is coming along?
Criteo and Flipkart partnered to launch Product Performance Ads (PPA) with Full Funnel measurement capabilities, strengthening Flipkart’s off-platform offerings and creating opportunities for advertisers across segments to reach and engage high-intent customers. Fueled by Criteo’s commerce media capabilities, Flipkart enables advertisers of any scale to deliver their full-funnel marketing goals on the open internet by leveraging its audience signals for highly relevant reach and therefore higher overall campaign efficiency. Following this partnership announcement, we were able to share a success story with Flipkart at the Criteo Commerce Forum in 2023. Criteo and Flipkart worked together to drive new customer acquisitions and repeat purchases for Reckitt’s home hygiene products through Flipkart PPA. Reckitt was able to engage with the high-intent audience on the Flipkart website and achieved a 3 times increase in product page views, doubled click-through rate, and 4.86 ROAS.
How are GroupM’s clients benefitting from the Criteo partnership?
The partnership brings together product sales data and the proprietary media solutions of GroupM, with privacy-safe commerce audiences and proximity-based insights provided by Criteo. Criteo’s insights technology will further enhance media planning, budget allocation, and best-in-class activation, enabling new levels of relevance, optimization, and conversion for GroupM clients across all channels.
What trends are we seeing in terms of how brands use commerce media? What is its USP in the full funnel?
The trends in how brands utilise commerce media are centered around maximising the efficiency of marketing efforts through first-party data strategies. Commerce media targeting and audiences are built on commerce data (first-party, real-world customer journey / intent signals and transactions) to inform marketing decisions, improve targeting, create efficient, effective ads, and deliver richer consumer experiences. This is only possible with artificial intelligence (AI) that can analyze and apply commerce data to develop predictive models that improve recommendations and bidding. It can also help media owners enhance their own audiences for monetization purposes.
Commerce media is not just about reaching consumers at the point of purchase. It’s about reaching them across all channels, from online to offline, and throughout the entire purchase funnel – so long as those touchpoints can be attributable to sales or a transaction. This means that commerce media can be used to drive awareness, consideration, and conversion, all the way from the initial research stage to the final purchase.
Could you talk about Criteo’s video ad solution?
Criteo’s video ad solution is strategically positioned to tap into India’s booming video ad opportunities, forecasted to reach 512 million viewers by 2025. This aligns with Criteo’s recent Shopper Story report findings, revealing that Indian consumers are actively engaged across multiple internet-enabled devices, including cable/satellite TV subscriptions (40%), OTT media (39%), and Connected TV Devices (30%) every week. The proliferation of IoT has expanded touchpoints for user engagement, leading to a hybrid path to purchase. Criteo’s Video advertising solution leverages these trends with a focus on measurable outcomes.
Using Criteo’s Shopper Graph and AI Engine, marketers can create video ads to reach a vast audience on the open Internet. The solution offers flexibility with manual or automated audience targeting, optimizing campaigns across in-stream, out-stream, and vertical video formats. By integrating video and performance solutions, Criteo enables marketers to build brand awareness, drive traffic, and engage with users throughout the buying journey, leveraging identity and buying path data for effective conversions.
What role is AI playing in the digital ad landscape?
AI plays a pivotal role in the digital ad landscape, revolutionizing how marketers engage with consumers. At Criteo, AI is ingrained in our DNA, driving innovation and delivering impactful outcomes for advertising campaigns. Our early roots in AI, dating back over 18 years, have evolved into sophisticated commerce-focused AI-powered solutions that prioritize personalization.
Advancements in AI have transformed product recommendation advertising, reshaping the purchase journey for consumers. Machine learning algorithms analyze vast commerce data sets, predicting each user’s preferences and crafting tailored ads. These AI-driven recommendation systems enable highly personalised ads, leading to increased engagement and desired outcomes such as clicks and purchases. As AI algorithms learn from each interaction, they continuously enhance their performance, ensuring a dynamic and effective advertising experience for brands and consumers alike.
Our AI Lab at Criteo continuously explores and tests new machine learning models, pushing the boundaries of what digital advertising can achieve. We run over 100,000 tests per year on new performance algorithms and variables.
At the same time, the ad fraud challenge will grow. What is an effective way to tackle this?
At Criteo, we strive to maintain a trusted advertising ecosystem that aligns with the marketing goals and brand requirements of our buyers and sellers. We enforce strict quality standards to protect brands and campaign performance. Our granular controls help ensure ads are displayed only on content and inventory that align with your brand identity and standards. Moreover, our advanced detection and prevention systems help reach real human users with a genuine interest in your brand and products, effectively combating fraudulent traffic.
Additionally, our comprehensive Ad Guidelines and proprietary machine learning technology ensure that ads displayed align with publisher standards.
How is Criteo leveraging tech to enhance operational efficiency?
Our operations rely on large data center units and we have a team dedicated to capacity planning that oversees the optimal allocation of infrastructure resources according to business objectives, to optimize Criteo’s infrastructure usage regarding costs and power usage. Data center rightsizing is a long-term and continuous effort, which involves resizing data centers in terms of server volume to increase energy efficiency all while maintaining the same quality of service — and responding to future business growth. With the thorough machine refurbishing that was performed in recent years, Criteo believes that one new server in operation now performs at least as much work as the two previous ones: the new processors are answering twice as many requests per second for one watt consumed (QPS/Watt).
Criteo is committed to sustainability and has crafted an environmental strategy with CSR objectives. In 2023, it achieved a significant milestone by setting carbon emission reduction targets for 2030 in line with the Paris Agreement, demonstrating its commitment to environmental stewardship. We made notable strides in managing the environmental impacts of its data centers, aiming to reduce its carbon footprint.
