Criteo is turning a corner: strong, low double-digit percentage growth for three quarters in a row after anemic growth before.
New products’ growth is now able to make up for the losses in the former core retargeting business. It was not always clear they would be able to pull that off.
Of those, maybe surprisingly, the Commerce Audiences data business seems to now make more money than Retail Media, when the latter was touted as Criteo’s knight in shining armor. This means the data business performs better than expected, perhaps on the back of buyers fighting signal loss. Retail media is growing at about market speed (34% vs. 30-40% yoy).
Retargeting is shrinking pretty rapidly, from 90%+ just four years ago to now 42%. The decline has been so pronounced that the company decided to roll retargeting, Commerce Audiences and and iponweb (i.e., anything not Retail Media) into a catch-all Performance Marketing segment for the 1Q earnings. Less information, but better looks.
This also means Criteo is betting on Retail Media as its main driver of growth going forward.
Note: Criteo reducing reportable segments to just Retail Media and Performance Marketing means 1Q product revenue shares for non-Retail Media products in this post and chart are estimated.
Criteo’s stock price is up more than 5% following the earnings call – the market acknowledges that @megan_clarken’s turn-around effort is working.
W Media Research 