Marseille edit
Criteo is a French company of advertising on Web launched in 2005 by three IT engineers: Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, Franck Ouay and Romain Niccoli. The first one launched the start-up K-Mobile, resold just before establishing Criteo. The two others studied in École des Mines (French engineering school) and worked in Microsoft Research and Development department. These three people’s shock was dedicated at first to the recommendation personalized for the e-commerce sites. Then, the company developed the service which was going to make its success: the advertising targeting.
Criteo method
The product which made Criteo successful is the advertising targeting. The company finalized a unique algorithm which offers advertisements to Internet users according to their history of navigation. Specifically, if an Internet user looked at a pair of shoes of his dream, without buying them, on favorite online sale site, Criteo will offer now this pair of shoes in the form of advertising inserts. This method’s objective: to link the consumer by reminding him his desire of new shoes. Thanks to this idea of "reminding a desire", concretized by an algorithm created in house, the company quickly found its place in the digital advertising universe. Later it did not stop innovating in programmatic marketing and targeted advertising, improving its technology and strengthening its position in the sector.
Entrepreneurship success-story
Originally, there were three. In February 2015, the company had more than 1,300 employees. Since 2004, the company has funded less than 50 million Euros of investment. These funds allowed Criteo to develop its product to maturity which required big investments in Research and Development. From 2009, managers announced that the company was profitable. Since this year, Criteo’s economic profits has increased in an exponential way. In 2011, its turnover increased to 200 million Euros. In 2013, it soared to 444 million Euros. In 2014, it reached 745 million Euros. In 2015, the figure went up one billion to 1.193 billion Euros. In the same year, the French company has obtained 10,000 customers. They are especially settled in the United States and Japan, as well as in emerging markets (Russia, China, Latin America). It is noted that Criteo was listed in the Stock Exchange in 2013, and directly included in NASDAQ index. Today, the giant advertising pursues the development, in particular by acquiring start-ups; following the example of Tedemis (a specialist of the advertisement targeting) or Adqantic (specialized in SEM) in 2014.
Article written by Bertrand Connin