Criteo NASDAQ: CRTO is increasingly positioning itself “as more than an ad tech company,” CEO Michael Komasinski said during a Morgan Stanley conference discussion, describing the business as an AI-driven “commerce intelligence and decisioning” platform designed to help brands, retailers, and agencies drive commerce outcomes across a fragmented media ecosystem.
Komasinski said Criteo sits “right in the center of the commerce ecosystem,” with cross-channel orchestration and decisioning capabilities aimed at optimizing campaigns and conversion outcomes. To illustrate the company’s scale, he cited several operating metrics, including visibility into more than $1 trillion of commerce transactions per year, a global client base of about 17,000, a normalized catalog of more than 5 billion SKUs, and reach of 750 million daily active users (extending to more than 3 billion when social channels are included).
Three priorities: agentic initiatives, performance media, and retail media
Komasinski framed Criteo’s strategy around three pillars.
Agentic initiatives are centered on three areas:
- A ChatGPT pilot announced earlier in the week, in which Criteo has been invited to participate as an API partner.
- A product recommendation service announced “a couple of weeks ago,” which Komasinski said demonstrates the value of Criteo’s dataset by generating high-fidelity product recommendations.
- “Agentic enablement” of products, including a move away from traditional user interfaces toward MCP-enabled APIs, which he said should make products easier to use, more scalable, and more accessible.
Performance media is focused on “re-energizing” growth through full-funnel offerings, cross-channel capabilities, and self-service tools. Komasinski said full-funnel and cross-channel are linked because competing for mid- and upper-funnel budgets requires access to diversified supply to optimize campaigns. Self-service is aimed at making the product easier to buy and use.
Retail media remains a major focus, with Komasinski calling it the fastest-growing segment of the media landscape. He said Criteo has built an “industry-leading position” with 235 retailers globally and is working to accelerate growth by expanding monetization opportunities, adding demand partners, and scaling the segment.
Market conditions and category dynamics
On the advertising environment, Komasinski said trends had remained stable through the fourth quarter and that the holiday season was solid. He noted that Criteo’s first-quarter guidance reflected some softness in U.S. department stores and year-over-year comparisons in Asia Pacific, while describing the broader macro backdrop as “relatively stable.”
He added that Criteo is working through previously disclosed headwinds tied to “scope reductions on some large retailers” announced last April, and said the company is focused on driving underlying business performance as those comparisons roll off over the year, particularly later in the year.
In performance media, Komasinski described the segment as being in “re-acceleration mode,” noting that addressability concerns have eased and that the company has been able to push product expansion and accelerate its roadmap. He pointed to several upcoming and in-progress efforts, including Commerce Go, a new discovery product planned for alpha and beta in the first half of the year (with hoped-for general availability in the second half), and the ability to allocate performance spend into what he called the “agentic channel.”
In retail media, he cited continued investment in auction-based display and said a conquesting product was launched “two months early.” He also referenced investments in the Commerce Max platform, including a new insights module and cross-retail campaign support intended to make it easier for brands to buy across Criteo’s retailer network.
ChatGPT pilot and “discovery” as a growth area
Discussing the ChatGPT pilot, Komasinski summarized the relationship as: “ChatGPT scales discovery and Criteo optimizes downstream cross-channel conversion.” He said Criteo’s integration allows advertisers’ campaign information to be passed to ChatGPT, which can then determine contextually relevant opportunities to surface ads. Komasinski characterized discovery as a key emerging growth area and said client interest since the announcement had been significant.
Commerce Go: self-service product aimed at SMBs
Komasinski said Criteo’s self-service product, Commerce Go, is launching at the end of the quarter and is designed for small- and mid-sized businesses with “full self-registration.” He described it as “five clicks to campaign,” with automated tagging infrastructure and creative pulled in automatically.
He added that Criteo began transitioning existing clients to Go late last year and said those clients churned less, spent more on activated media spend, and achieved “20% better performance.” With the upcoming launch, he said the focus shifts to acquiring net new customers and expanding the sales pipeline.
Re-domiciling plans and capital allocation framework
Komasinski also addressed the company’s re-domiciling process, saying Criteo expects to move from France to Luxembourg in early third quarter 2026, followed by a potential move to the U.S. that could conclude in the first quarter of 2027. He said the shift is intended to address constraints associated with the French domicile, including an ADS structure, lack of passive index inclusion, and capital controls limiting share buybacks. He said shareholders approved the recommendations with more than 98% support at an extraordinary general meeting held the prior Friday.
On profitability and investment, Komasinski said the company expects to continue balancing efficiency with product and channel investment. He pointed to Commerce Go as a potential cost-to-serve lever and described a broader AI efficiency program across the company.
For capital allocation, he reiterated Criteo’s priority order: investing in organic growth, pursuing “high-value opportunistic acquisitions,” and then returning capital to shareholders through buybacks. He said the company has been selective on M&A despite an active pipeline.
Closing on AI, Komasinski said he believes investors underappreciate the potential incremental contribution of agentic commerce to overall e-commerce. However, he also flagged what he called an underappreciated challenge: agentic platforms will need high-quality data feeds—accurate product data, pricing, and availability—to deliver high-fidelity recommendations at scale.
About Criteo NASDAQ: CRTO
Criteo is a global technology company specializing in digital performance advertising and commerce media solutions. The company provides a range of AI-driven ad products designed to help brands, retailers, and agencies deliver personalized promotional messages to consumers across web, mobile, and connected TV environments. By leveraging large-scale data analytics and machine learning algorithms, Criteo's platform optimizes the timing, placement, and creative of ads to drive engagement and conversions.
At the core of Criteo's offering is its dynamic retargeting solution, which enables advertisers to automatically generate and display personalized product recommendations based on user behavior.
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