‘Criteo is investing heavily in India as it is a very important market strategically’

With a focus on retail media and advertising technology product development, both in-house and via acquisitions, Criteo has quickly become the one-stop shop with its supply-side and demand-side ad tech platforms. The Paris-headquartered company, which entered retail media advertising space about 15 years ago and now operates across 38 countries including the US, held its first flagship event "Criteo Commerce Forum” in India on Tuesday. 

On the sidelines of the event, exchange4media spoke to the company’s General Manager, Global Enterprise Sherry Smith, and Managing Director, Enterprise, APAC, Taranjeet Singh to understand the opportunities and challenges before retail media in general and Criteo in particular. 

India plans

Criteo, which has been investing in India for the past three years, has planned to invest more in the coming days, Singh reveals. “India is a very important market for us strategically, hence we are investing heavily. We are setting up a research centre which will cater not only to India, but the rest of the APAC as well.”

The research centre would be based in Hyderabad but people from across India are being hired for this centre, Singh said. 

He added, “Over the last three years, our staff strength in India has quadrupled. Over 150 are currently working with the company. More investments are on cards.”

When asked about business projections for India, Singh quips, “We don’t give out country-specific projections”. 

He didn’t disclose Criteo’s ad rates as well. “We cannot share the ad rates but can confirm that our rates are competitive. Rate differs from category to category and product to product.” 

Emerging trends 

Retail Media is the third-fastest growing advertising channel in 2023 (behind digital OOH and CTV, although those channels are a fraction of the size). It is projected to grow 9.9% to reach $125.7 billion in 2023, and is forecast to exceed TV revenue (including CTV) in 2028, according to a GroupM’s This Year Next Year 2023 report. 

“To keep up with the pace of growth of retail media and investment flowing in the retailer ad space, both brands and retailers are focused on building capabilities to improve the customer experience through innovative ad formats and data-driven marketing analytics,” Sherry Smith and Taranjeet Singh noted. 

Smith explains, “Over the past couple of years, retailers have become media owners. They are trying, testing and learning ways to scale up and build the ecosystem that supports customer journeys across all touchpoints. They also desire to standardize the retail media measurements as well and are collaborating to come up with one.”

Singh pointed out that the APAC region has one added layer that is marketplaces. So, both marketplaces and retail media are trying to create more values for the audiences they have. It is an exciting time for Criteo as we are working to help most of those players help them create that value, Singh said.  

Opportunities 

As marketers face macroeconomic challenges, every ad dollar counts and acquiring new customers effectively and efficiently is critical to their strategies. 

Singh noted, “Most players in India and SouthEast Asia are under profitability pressure. To stabilize the revenue, they need to have a certain Gross Merchandise Value. This is where Criteo can help them.” 

Amazon made $38 billion from ads in 2022. In India, Amazon earned more than Rs 4,200 Cr of ad revenue which is nearly 7 percent of digital ad spend in the country.

“While Amazon has over 7 percent share in the global digital ad market, most retailers have less than one percent share so there are a lot of opportunities in this domain,” Smith says. 

Smith shares that Criteo has come up with a video advertising solution powered by AI and Shopper Graph. “Our video advertising comes with performance capabilities, covering multiple touchpoints and leveraging audience-first ad solutions like in-stream and out-stream video, mobile app, web traffic, consideration, and retargeting,” Smith noted.