Criteo S A : Q1 2025 Transcript

Published: 2025-05-05 15:04:23 ET CRTO

Published on 05/05/2025 at 15:04

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CRTO.OQ - Q1 2025 Criteo SA Earnings Call

EVENT DATE/TIME: MAY 02, 2025 / 12:00PM GMT

‌Good morning, and welcome to Criteo's first-quarter 2025 earnings call. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Melanie Dambre, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.‌

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Criteo's first-quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining us on the call today is Chief Executive Officer, Michael Komasinski; and Chief Financial Officer, Michael Komasinski are going to share some prepared remarks. Todd Parsons, our Chief Product Officer, will join us for the Q&A session.

As usual, you will find our investor presentation on our Investor Relations website now as well as the prepared remarks and transcript after the call.

Before we get started, I would like to remind you that our remarks will include forward-looking statements, which reflect Criteo's judgments, assumptions and analysis as of today. Our actual results may differ materially from current expectations based on a number of factors affecting Criteo's business. Except as required by law, we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements discussed today. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our earnings release as well as our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC.

We will also discuss non-GAAP measures of our performance. Definitions and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP metrics are included in our earnings release published today. Finally, unless otherwise stated, all work comparisons made during this call or against the same period in the prior year.

With that, let me now hand it over to Michael.

Thanks, Melanie, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. I'm proud to be here for my first earnings call as CEO of Criteo. It's a tremendous opportunity to lead the company forward with focus and ambition.

Over the past two months, I've had the chance to meet with many of our teams across the region, along with clients and partners. I want to start by sharing a few reflections on why I took the role, what I've observed in my first couple of months, and how we're thinking about the road ahead. But before I do that, I want to address two important recent developments.

First one is related to Google's recent decision to keep third-party cookies, which has positive near-term and long-term implications. In addition to a modest benefit this year, we now operate from a position of strength and with greater clarity. We're bullish about the long-term prospects of our Performance Media segment. Our investments in addressability have led to significant AI innovation that will continue to pay off across all environments. With a future-proofed approach to privacy protecting addressability, we're moving full steam ahead to execute tailored full-funnel, cross-channel campaigns to drive measurable outcomes for our clients in any scenario and for the long term.

The second development impacts us in the near term and is related to our large retail media client, who has been a long-standing partner. This client unexpectedly notified us this week that while they will continue to use our industry-leading retail media technology platform under a multiyear committed contract, they will discontinue our managed services and curtail the remaining brand demand sales services in November of this year. Instead of a natural and gradual evolution of the support we provide them with, this is a sudden change that will result in a significant impact on the growth rates of our Retail Media business for a 12-month period starting in Q4 2025.

However, this near-term change does not affect our substantial opportunities to continue to grow faster than the market across the rest of our retailer base and for the long term. More broadly, it's important to highlight that Criteo as a leading and independent ad tech player has built something unique, a robust, AI-powered performance media business combined with leading capabilities in Retail Media, one of the fastest-growing segments of digital advertising. Criteo is right at the center of commerce and media and that combination is powerful.

We have deep commerce data, advanced AI capabilities, a large and diversified global client base, impressive talent and a strong position across the digital advertising ecosystem. Criteo is increasingly viewed as a must-have agency partner in the evolving advertising landscape, and I saw firsthand that our relationships with leading global agencies are growing more strategic every quarter.

For my first couple of months, I can see that Criteo hasn't yet realized its fullest potential. My key priorities are to reaccelerate growth and improve its durability, fortify our leadership position in Retail Media, reenergize our Performance Media business and amplify the power of our platform, all with a sharp focus on maximizing shareholder value. The opportunity ahead is to intensify our focus, scale our strength and build down in a few core strategic initiatives to deliver durable, strong and profitable growth.

First, we have early momentum behind our platform strategy. We've elevated our positioning in the market, and we have major enterprise clients like Office Depot and ODP Business Solutions now utilizing our comprehensive Commerce Media Platform. They leverage our demand-side capabilities with commerce growth and Commerce Max and our supply side solutions through Commerce Grid and Commerce Yield. This demonstrates the value of our integrated approach. We're also expanding our global agency partnerships to activate more of the overall platform. These strategic partnerships will continue to be a key growth lever for us moving forward.

As a multiproduct platform company, we have many synergies across our products. There is a real opportunity to amplify these connections and enable our flywheel. Second, we're focused on driving more demand to our platform. That's key to reaccelerating growth. After establishing a strong foothold in retail media supply, we're deepening agency and API partnerships and expect to incorporate more demand sources moving forward, including through Microsoft and other partnerships.

In Performance Media, we're excited about the rollout of Commerce Go, our new AI-powered automation and optimization tool set to launch high-performing campaigns in just five clicks and onboard more advertisers faster.

Third, we're leaning into brand performance, helping brands build awareness that's actionable and linked to measurable outcomes. Our reach across multiple buyer types and our unique ability to deliver performance across the buyer journey gives us optionality. No one else delivers performance everywhere like we do, and it's powered by a rock-solid foundation and sustained innovation. That's a strength we plan to build on with new product extensions.

For the second quarter in a row, we've seen success in capturing budgets from traditional upper funnel DSPs, which reinforces our growing relevance across the full funnel. Underpinning all of this is our AI innovation. We have world-class capabilities, including the right training data, and we intend to continue to accelerate the pace of our innovation. In Performance Media, our AI delivers greater automation and performance breakthroughs. More broadly, as AI agents become a new interface for consumers, we see a clear opportunity for Criteo to play a central role in helping brands show up where it matters in real time with measurable outcomes.

In Retail Media, AI is a key enabler for our full funnel relevancy and holistic page optimization strategy. As we look to the future, here's what you can expect from us. we intend to continue to lead in Commerce Media and maintain our disciplined approach to growth through our build, partner and buy framework. We'll hold ourselves accountable, aligning ambition with execution. We're shifting from transformation to scale with continuous innovation and disciplined execution. That means further expanding across multiple channels, including retail media, Open Web and social to serve a full buyer journey.

We're investing in new formats such as outcome-based native display, on-site video and CTV, all expanding our SAM. Importantly, we are evolving from a largely managed service model to more scalable self-service platform. We're excited about this new chapter, and we have a world-class team to execute. For my part, I lead with transparency, operational rigor and a focus on measurable impact. I take a hands-on approach to understanding the business dynamics, enabling smart decisions to turn high ambitions into tangible results.

Now, turning to our first quarter performance. We delivered solid results, reflecting continued execution and momentum. Starting with Retail Media. We activated $335 million in media spend, up 21% year-over-year from over 3,800 brands globally. Our media spend growth was primarily driven by our multiyear partnerships with leading agencies with a year-over-year increase of approximately 50% in US agency spend again this quarter. At the same time, our growing relationships with independent agencies are fueling the expansion of our small and midsized brand roster.

With the transition of retailers from Microsoft advertising to our platform, we now partner with 70% of the top 30 retailers in the US, an increase from 65% previously, and our pipeline is strong. We're expanding globally, with new wins across all regions, including DICK'S Sporting Goods in the US, Endeavor in Australia, D shopping in Japan, Cooperative U in France and Elkjop, our first retailer in the Nordics. We're also expanding our collaboration with Ela Clark in France.

Additionally, we're building from our success with sponsored ads to expand to newer formats, including on-site video, we recently launched into general availability and our outcome-based native on-site display offering coming later this year. Shoppable video is a powerful addition for on-site advertising, expanding inventory, boosting engagement and elevating the overall shopping experience. For retailers, it unlocks new revenue streams while enhancing how shoppers discover and interact with products. For brands, it raises awareness at the point of sale and drives purchases, all back by closed-loop measurement. We're excited to see early adoption of onsite video from several key retail partners, including Albertsons Companies and Costco, and we look forward to rolling this out over the next several quarters.

Overall, we're confident that our comprehensive full funnel on-site advertising capabilities combining video, display and sponsored product ad formats and one unified platform can increase our market share gain. Retail Media offsite represents a complementary opportunity for retailers and brands to expand their reach across the open web. Most recently, we launched offsite with Office Depot, ODP Business Solutions and Costco Canada in our Commerce Max DSP. The recent campaign with HP and Costco showcased the power of our full funnel retail media strategy. Shoppers exposed to both on-site and off-site ads saw an 855% uplift in conversion rates, and over 10 times increase in revenue per user and a 58% lift in click-through rates. All a clear demonstration of how our integrated approach drives measurable business impact.

In addition, we now have several retailers running off-site monetization through our Commerce Grid SSP, enabling brands to access retailer audiences via third-party DSPs. This demonstrates our platform synergies and further expands the scale and flexibility of our Retail Media offering.

Moving on to Performance Media. We're encouraged by the sequential increase in media spend growth, excluding ad tech services. Our growth was led by Commerce Audiences are set of precision targeting tactics that leverage our large commerce data set and best-in-class AI to help advertisers acquire and retain customers. We've successfully capitalized on cross-selling and increasingly benefit from third-party demand via our Commerce Grid SSP. We're now focused on expanding beyond these initial levers to unlock even greater scale and opportunity. We believe our ability to drive performance for clients is the strongest it has ever been and will continue to expand.

We're focused on unifying the buyer journey in a single independent platform for advertisers to drive brand performance and reach shoppers wherever they are. To this end, we further expanded our social offering in the first quarter, enabling advertisers to activate Facebook and Instagram inventory at the SKU level for their commerce audience campaigns globally. While still early days, this led to a 40% sequential increase in social campaigns this quarter.

Our value proposition is resonating and we're pleased to announce a new preferred partnership with annuity, one of the largest independent full funnel agencies in the US to leverage our Performance Media solutions. More broadly, our goal is to deliver an end-to-end self-service streamlined workflow with Commerce Go, allowing advertisers to plan, buy and optimize across ad formats and channels, all while onboarding clients faster and reducing our cost to serve.

Our advanced AI automates decisions around audiences, channels, ad formats and creatives to maximize results. And while we're still in the early stages of the rollout, we're seeing steady adoption from small clients and lower churn. We've grown Commerce Go campaign volume by 45% quarter-over-quarter, predominantly coming from small clients. We are focused on our go-to-market efforts to build on this progress over the next several quarters.

To summarize, we believe Criteo is well positioned with many growth vectors in front of us. Our diversified global business and robust financial foundation gives us a strong position, and our focus on performance enables us to be resilient. By staying focused and operating with rigor, we're confident in the long-term potential of our platform and are firmly committed to driving sustained value for our shareholders. In Performance Media, we have gained greater clarity and have been even -- and have even more confidence in our long-term outlook. In Retail Media, the fundamentals and momentum of our business remains strong despite the near-term challenges.

‌Overall, we have momentum behind our holistic platform strategy, and we anticipate growth in our business. We will pull cost and productivity levers as needed to maintain 2025 adjusted EBITDA margins in the 33% to 34% range and generate industry-leading cash flows. Criteo sits at the heart of Commerce Media uniquely powered by cutting-edge AI and unmatched commerce data at scale. We're firmly committed to driving shareholder value, and we intend to continue our share buyback, underscoring our confidence in our strategy and financial strength and our belief in the intrinsic value of our shares. We know there is more to do, and the management team and Board continue to explore all ways to enhance value for our shareholders.‌

With that, I'll hand it over to Sarah, who will provide more details on our financial results and our outlook.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Our first quarter performance reflects strong execution and financial discipline. Revenue was

$451 million and contribution ex tax increased to $264 million. This includes a year-over-year headwind from foreign currencies of $6 million. At constant currency, Q1 contribution ex tax grew by 7% year-over-year, representing growth of 24% on a two-year stack basis. We are lapping a tougher comparison with significant AI-driven performance enhancements in 2024 as well as the prior year quarter, including -- and Easter, Client retention remains high at close to 90%.

Starting with Retail Media revenue of $59 million and contribution ex-TAC grew 18% at constant currency to $59 million. Our growth was driven by continued strength in Retail Media on-site and continued traction for off-site campaigns. We benefited from the contribution of newly signed retailers and growth from existing clients remain strong, with same retailer contribution ex cat retention at 120%. On the supply side, we continue to win new retailers globally, including former Microsoft advertising retailers. As expected and as previously communicated, we also benefited from higher tiered fees in January for exceeding fiscal year volume threshold.

On the demand side, we saw a significant expansion with CPG and smaller brands, and we onboarded 300 new brands this quarter. There is continued momentum with our agency partners, and we expect our 3,800 global brands to continue to prioritize Retail Media as a key channel for their advertising investments given the proximity with the point of sale. During the first quarter, we experienced strength in grocery while we saw lower growth in beauty.

In Performance Media, revenue was $392 million and contribution ex tax was $206 million, up 4% at constant currency. This was driven by our commerce growth solution, which leverages our large-scale commerce data, an AI-powered audience modeling technology defined in-market shoppers. We also benefited from the growth of our Commerce Grid SSP, while ad tech services continue to be negatively impacted by lower spend by a large client in our media training marketplace. We benefit from a global diversified client base.

By region, we delivered double-digit growth in media spend in Asia Pac and low single-digit growth in Europe and in the Middle East, while we saw lower budgets in the US. By vertical, travel remains our fastest-growing vertical, up 44% followed by classified and marketplace is performing well. Broadly, there was lower spending in retail, and fashion was down 6%. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $92 million in Q1 2025, up 30% year-over-year, mainly driven by operational leverage from top line growth and cost discipline, including a slower pace of hiring and lower bad debt expense.

Non-GAAP operating expenses decreased 3% year-over-year, reflecting our rigor on resource allocation. We invest in our growth areas while optimizing our operating model to enable scale and operational efficiencies. We continue to streamline our processes to work better and faster and enable increased productivity with AI-driven tools.

Moving down the P&L, depreciation and amortization increased by 3% in Q1 2025 to $26 million. Share-based compensation expense was $16 million, reflecting a normalized run rate compared to $27 million in 2024. Our income from operations was $48 million, and our net income was

$40 million in Q1 2025, an increase compared to $9 million last year. Our weighted average diluted share count was $57.2 million, which resulted in diluted earnings per share of $0.66 compared to $0.12 last year. Our adjusted diluted EPS was $1.10 in Q1 2025, up 38% year-over-year. Operating cash flow was $62 million, and free cash flow was $45 million in Q1 reflecting improved working capital and lapping last year's calendar impact.

We benefit from a strong financial position and pristine balance sheet with solid cash generation and no long-term debt. We had $810 million in total liquidity as of the end of March, which gives us significant financial flexibility to execute on our strategies and enable disciplined and balanced capital allocation. Our priorities are to invest in high ROI organic investments and value-enhancing acquisitions and to return capital to shareholders via our share buyback program. We are confident in our business strategy, and we are committed to driving shareholder value. We deployed $56 million for share repurchases this quarter, which included the repurchase of 1.5 million shares, and we will continue to actively buy shares as part of our buyback program.

Turning to our financial outlook, which reflects our expectations as of today, May 2, 2025. We have taken a prudent approach given the uncertain macro environment and the reduced -- services related to our largest retail media clients. It is important to emphasize that our strategic priorities remain unchanged, with a strong focus on top line growth delivering for our clients and ensuring strong operational rigor on costs and cash. We also have greater clarity around Google's plans for third-party cookies, giving us even more confidence in the long-term outlook of our Performance Media segment.

For 2025, we now expect contribution ex TAC to grow low single digits year-over-year at constant currency, with growth in each of our segments. We now estimate ForEx changes to drive a positive year-over-year impact of about $10 million to $12 million on contribution ex tax for the full year. In Retail Media, we have a scaled $250 million plus revenue base. Our 2025 Retail Media growth is now projected to be in the low to mid-single-digit range at constant currency.

The downward revision contemplates a more challenging macro environment, driving delays of certain retailers tech road map. This revision also reflects the scope changes for our largest retail clients and for a food delivery client in the US. We expect the reduced scope for these two specific clients to result in a $25 million negative impact in 2025, largely related to Q4 2025 and approximately $75 million for the first 10 months of 2026 until it annualizes. We have included our most prudent view in our updated outlook and do not anticipate any further significant changes.

Excluding these two clients, our underlying growth for 2025 is expected to be in the ballpark of 20%. In Performance Media, we expect contribution ex TAC to be up low single digits in 2025. This reflects continued traction with advertisers to drive performance throughout the buyer journey and lap tough comps from a significant AI-driven performance enhancements in 2024. We and our clients are excited about our platform innovation and look forward to continued ramp-up of Commerce Go. We also expect potentially lower ad budget in a challenging macro environment, especially in discretionary categories as all ad budgets are likely to face greater scrutiny.

Overall, we continue to anticipate an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 33% to 34% for 2025. Q1 adjusted EBITDA had some phasing benefits as some expenses shifted from Q1 into Q2. We intend to maintain margins and generate strong cash flow while continuing to invest in the growth of our Commerce Media Platform. We anticipate that the investments we are making this year will position us for continued top line growth and strong cash flow generation for the coming years. We expect a normalized tax rate of 22% to 27% on the current rules. Our overall CapEx is expected to be approximately $100 million, and we now expect a free cash flow conversion rate of above 45% of adjusted EBITDA before any nonrecurring items.

For Q2 2025, we expect contribution ex TAC of $270 million to $278 million, down 2% -- minus 2% to flat at constant currency. Our range takes into account the volatility in the macro environment, its impact on consumers and our clients and top April trends. As previously communicated, this includes a sequential decrease in our Retail Media growth in Q2 mainly due to lapping a tough comparison and the tiered fees in January. We estimate ForEx changes to drive a positive year-over-year impact of about $10 million to $12 million on contribution ex TAC in Q2.

We expect adjusted EBITDA between $60 million and $66 million. And as previously communicated, this includes a onetime planned company-wide internal event. It also reflects continued high ROI growth investments in our platform, our annual employee merit increase effective in April and foreign rate exchange rate headwinds on our European cost base. We anticipate a slower pace of hiring and less discretionary spend for the remainder of the year.

As a reminder, in Q2 2024, we benefited from a reduction in bad debt expense due to lower DSO for Retail Media and a onetime milestone payment related to one of our large partnerships. To conclude our strong Q1 results demonstrate the underlying strength of our Commerce Media Platform, while we are facing near-term challenges, including uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment, we expect to continue to deliver growth, healthy profitability and solid cash generation. We have a resilient business with robust performance capabilities and a broad and diversified client base. We have strong conviction in our strategy and our business model, and we have the access to commerce data that fuels our AI model to enable performance and relevance at scale across the buyer journey.

‌And with that, I'll hand it over to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

(Operator Instructions) Ygal Arounian, Citigroup.

So I guess first, not surprisingly, on Retail Media. Over the past few quarters, you guys have highlighted the competitive environment, how Criteo has been getting stronger within that competitive environment in a pretty meaningful way. And the combined impacts here that we're talking about are roughly a third -- it would be roughly a third of your Retail Media contribution ex TAC in 2025. So that's a pretty meaningful impact.

And I just want to kind of expand on, a, with your largest retail partner, why -- maybe why you think this is happening again after this happened 15 years ago, why they're pulling back further, given the support you offer maybe a little bit on Uber Eats also happening why that's happening and the confidence that your competitive positioning remains as it plays out. Is there further risk of in-housing and just how we think about that?

And then a follow-up just on maybe if we could expand on the comments around April and the softer macro, a little bit more detail on what you're seeing there?

Thanks, Ygal, I can start the first question, and then I'll ask Sarah for some extra commentary. In terms of the in-housing question, we see some retailers willing to own the sales and demand front end of their Retail Media network but continuing to use our technology. But not every retailer can take that on. And Criteo's demand generation is differentiated and as is our technology, which we don't see any risk to in-housing from.

‌So no, I don't -- we don't see this as continuing trend. This client being one of the larger ones in the market was probably overdue to start to adopt this operating model. And in fact, we had contemplated it for some time. So I'll let Sarah talk a little bit about that.

Yes. Thanks for the question. Just in terms of this situation, first of all, this is a very long-standing partner for us and obviously is our largest Retail Media clients. What we have seen over the years is that they have -- they had changed their arrangement with us. a few years back, as you know. In this situation, what has happened is that they have removed services, which relate to two specific items. One relates to client services that we support and bringing in new clients and demand generation services as well as other services, including billing and collection. That is now -- will now be curtailed on November. That being said, we have incredible long-term relationship with them. They will continue to use our tech for running Retail Media.

So there will be no other change there. But it is a significant impact, especially given that we have done, we'd say, a strong job for them as well as our other clients across this year and in 2025. We do expect strong growth across the rest of the base and for the long term, and we expect to continue to get leverage from our tech across this customer and all our customers for the long term. As specifically to the US food delivery clients, this was a choice by them simply for the US market. We are continuing to manage all the business for them globally. And that, as you know, was announced externally.

‌Overall, we do not expect this to be impacting us for other clients. This is, I would say, a unique situation, and we manage through it, and we continue to service all our clients, and we continue to drive our tech road map as well as the value that we deliver for them.

Okay. And then maybe just on the macro trends in April and what you're seeing?

‌Yes. I mean we did see a soft macro in April. I mean, we came off a fantastic Q4 strong traction into Q1. I would say in Q1, and as I said, we saw a mixed quarter, beauty being more down, fashion down, US retail department store also down, but offset with very strong growth, travel up 44% classifies up. Similar trends in April, but we did see, I would say, a flat Easter year-on-year, and it was softer across the board. I think just given some of the news in the macro environment, we saw a softening.

That being said, we always see that we have an incredibly resilient performance business. And none of our categories are down more than 10%. They are all either up or they're down to the kind of mid-single-digit range.

Mark Zgutowicz, Benchmark.

Welcome, Michael. I just wanted to get a sense -- I appreciate the color, Sarah, on the verticals that you saw a weaker in April. But in terms of spending patterns across income demographics, I know you see a lot of data and -- just curious if you're starting to see any weakness at the upper income levels relative to the low to mid, that would be interesting.

And then in terms of the OpEx leverage, Sarah, that you saw across all line items in the first quarter. I'm just curious how that should trend into Q2 and through the year, I think you have a better picture perhaps of the top line this year, but I would be interested in just getting a sense of how you plan to manage that. And then just initially, how we should be thinking about the 12-month revenue impact that begins in fourth quarter from your large client downtick.

Yes. Yes, I'm happy to take those. Thanks, Mark, for the question. I mean, first of all, on the macro, we do look at this, I would say, in many ways and actually there is information on our website regarding our kind of marketing trends. I don't know we show that in demographics.

What I would say is that we have seen -- we said fashion down, right, broadly beauty, which is including in the fragrance kind of categories in, I would say, the nicer stores down, US department stores, they're not doing as well. And we're clearly very focused on the retailers as they announced in the coming months.

But in terms of brand spend, it really is some brands are more resilient than others. So more discretionary categories, I would say, across income bands, we're seeing less pain, just in general. But we clearly keep a close eye on what the bank tell this year as well.

In terms of the operating leverage, we saw terrific operational leverage in Q1. We're really keeping a close eye. This is, I would say, a well-trained muscle for us point. So Q1, very strong EBITDA leverage coming from the top line. Q2 as -- and we actually have included within our investor materials a walk of Q1 to Q2 that you can see the dynamics there. Some of it relates to comps and some of it relates to specific onetime expenses.

There's also an FX headwind in there for our European cost base that we expect continue to see this year. But it's a very, I hope, a clear walk for you that we included in the materials. But overall, for the year, we are focused on ensuring that we deliver on the top line as well as on the bottom line, and we're going to continue to focus on all cost levels largely related to the, I would say, pace of new hires.

In terms of Retail Media client, we have a $250 million base for our Retail Media client. It's a scale base. It's across over 200 clients. We added over 1,100,000 year-on-year. That continues to grow. This impact relates to two specific client situations that will, of course, lap within a year. It is a significant headwind to us largely because I would say we've done a good job to ensure that we deliver services to our clients, including demand generation services for the long tail of brands, and that is the piece that will we could tell.

‌But overall, for all our client base, Thomas, Max is going well, high spend from agencies that want to go across retailer across our ad network. And so our focus is continue to ensure that we deliver value to all those bases. And of course, we'll see the uptake in our new clients as well as our new capabilities coming in, and we anticipate that will be more in the end of this year, but likely more to start ramping up in the beginning of next year, just given the uncertain macro.

Mark Kelley, Stifel.

Great. A couple of just quick ones on surprisingly on Retail Media. Just starting with your largest Retail Media client. Any way to give us a sense for what percent of the demand you were generating versus what they were doing in-house before this change?

And then second, just on the Uber relationship, can you just walk through what that process was like? I can see who the competitor is that starting to work with them in the US, but was there like an RFP process that -- where they were testing you against other solutions and the other solutions out. I'm just trying to get a sense for just the dynamics at Uber.

Yes, I'll just address the question on the largest retailer first. We do not, I would say, generally comment on our specific clients. But we -- and we also do not give information on what's being driven between ourselves and our clients. What we have said and what continues to be the case is that 80% of brand spend for large brands is being driven by most of our large retailers.

What we are doing is a very good job of increasing the number of brands globally and that tends to be the mid- to long tail that we do service for this client, but also for other clients, and that will be shifted in kind of at the end of this year. So that would be, I would say, the dynamic for this client.

‌In terms of concentration of clients, we do include our client concentration within our 10-K. So you can see the specifics within that.

Yes. Thanks, Sarah. Mark, I can address the your question. But while we're disappointed with the change, I think it's worth reminding what we continue our global partnership with Uber advertising and remain focused on the collaboration and driving share of success. Like Sarah said, we don't think you comment in detail about how clients make their decisions.

‌But I guess, what I can tell you is there was not a head-to-head competition of some kind that we lost down, and we were driving significant demand for that client, and they've made a decision that they think that there'll be maybe stronger synergy with another provider about the best I could surmise at this current state.

Richard Kramer, Arete Research.

Michael, you mentioned and Sarah as well, you mentioned the onboarding of the Microsoft clients, capturing budget from multiple funnel DSPs and you talked about the growth rates in agencies, both larger and midsized agencies, but we're not really seeing this come through in numbers this year.

And Sarah, it seems like you're mentioning more 2026 figures. Can you talk through what you could do to speed up the ramp of these both new cohorts of clients and also these new channels. It does seem like you're calling out a lot of areas where you're winning share, you've got a big pipeline. But again, it's hard to see that flowing through in numbers this year.

Yes, Richard, it's Michael. Thanks for the question. I'll start that and then probably -- for a little extra commentary. And like I mean, in general, there's a solid strategy here and a strong road map. And it's kind of back to my overall remarks that our focus here in the near terms is the focus on product delivery, scaling products in the market and make sure that we execute commercially.

In the near term, for Performance Media, we need to ramp Commerce Go and make sure that, that's positioned to have an impact on the business in 2026, continue to leverage our AI investments. And I think longer term, make sure that we can continue to move up funnel to be more of a full-funnel, cross-channel product on the performance side.

‌In Retail, near term, I think it's about driving solutions towards holistic page optimization and making sure that we scale new offerings like on-site video, right? That's contemplated in the plan. what we need to deliver against that. And then long term, it's really about solving the equation for efficient buying and Retail Media. But I'll let Todd comment on maybe a couple of the product advancements that --‌

Thanks, Michael -- Richard. I would just add one thing, which is Retail Media is still maturing into trading that pulls together on-site search, display and off-site in the full funnel cross-channel setup that Michael was measuring. And that's why we talk about the longer-term implications in partnership with Microsoft and other demand platforms because we have to make sure that all of those things trade in the full funnel cross-channel setup in an efficient manner.

‌And that's something that just doesn't exist across retail media today, and we are leading the charge to design it and to put it into place for the whole ecosystem. That's why we talk about it long term, and that's why you're not showing seeing it show up in the immediate term. But we're very confident that we're ahead of the charge there. And we have a footprint that is enviable on almost any level across the ecosystem to make that true. So that's just the one thing to add. But we're very bullish about the opportunity as we move into this space where retail media transacts full funnel cross channel.

‌I just to add to the forecast. I mean, as you've seen, we've -- we've moved to a more prudent view on the forecast. Some of that is related to the macroeconomics. We're winning clients, and win rate is strong, but we do anticipate some of those will be later, and that is largely due to client versus the, I would say, appetite to get going. So it's more that it's just a slower transition and a slower pace.

‌Okay. And maybe a quick follow-up for Todd and Sarah since you have the history there with respect to privacy sandbox, does retargeting somehow revive itself down the road? Or has this sort of third-party cookie ship already sailed. And maybe, Sarah, what sort of incremental testing costs were you wearing in the past year or two to make the transition to privacy sandbox that may now no longer be needed.

Let me take the first one, and Sarah can jump in after. It's a pretty simple equation. I think Michael mentioned earlier. We have made our investment in hybrid addressability and privacy sandbox specifically well before now. We're four years into that. Google's policy is only helping us expand retargeting and other direct response pools and making them perform a greater scale. So that's upside for us over time.

And in terms of the investment, again, just to reinforce what Michael said earlier, we've already made our investments in Privacy Sandbox. Most of those were accretive broadly because it took us in the world of deep learning for audience setups, for bidding, for a product recommendation and for our optimization in new ways.

So we're going to carry those long-term, and they're definitely upside for the company. We will not have to continue to invest in Privacy Sandbox APIs as we were before. So that does lose up a very slight amount of resources for the product road map.

Yes. Yes. I mean just to add to that, I would say this has been actually a great ROI investment for us across the board. We understand signal, we understand data -- teams right alongside all the -- we -- I mean, I would say, Todd and the R&D team alongside all the charge to really expand on how do we use data and AI signals in the best way. So I would say, not significant savings there because these are team members just understand this cold and are excited about the innovation that this will drive. So from our standpoint, we see those guys ahead to just have clarity on driving that road map forward.

‌Justin Patterson, KeyBanc.‌

‌Great. Sarah, you mentioned managing expenses during this period, while still investing for growth. Could you give us just how much -- a sense on how much flexibility there is around expense management this year. And maybe stepping back for Michael. We've seen a lot of interest on Retail Media more so from the video side as Connected TV ramps up. Any views on just how you might approach a channel like that and where that could fit on the long-term road map?

And just to address on the cost side, I mean, we clearly had a road map in an investment, including, I would say, selling and operational resources that was focused on maybe a different macro environment at the beginning of this year. So most of this would relate to not hiring for, I would say, more discretionary role.

Second, I would say that our focus is on a self-service platform and the Commerce Go would be one great area. It's a new segment for us, both a small clients, its self-service capability kind of end-to-end. And clearly, that's a more efficient operating model. So I would say those would be the two items that we're focused on.

We are not stopping any investments on high ROI investments. What we have seen is that we need less people to do that given AI innovation, just given some of the discussion we just had on the AI resource and engineers that are able to do more with less.

‌So all in all, it's across the board, but ultimately, it's doing what we do well, which is ensuring that the operating model and the resources are focused on just ensuring that we go full speed ahead on where our clients are going and on the efficiency that we can drive in the productivity.

Yes, I can -- and Justin, thanks for the question. I'll take the one on CTV. It all starts with our goal to serve the full buyer journey across multiple channels, and CTV is the second fastest-growing area of digital advertising.

And I think in terms of what it offers as a format. It supports brand building with the added benefit of being measurable, having closed loop attribution, and we think even can be a robust performance channel. So we're in the early stages of assessing how it would fit for us and how we would build connections between kind of living room commerce and other channels, so to speak. So it's early days, but it definitely could have helped us achieve more scale by capitalizing on, again, the second fastest growing segment of the media landscape.

Todd, you want to offer the whole -- early hypotheses.

Yes. I'd just reinforce something Michael said, we're looking at CTV and video across the full funnel cross-channel landscape. And it's not just something that we are considering. We are in the process of testing the dimensions of how it is used for both performance in the direct response context as well as all the way up to the top of the funnel in discovery advertising. So we have two dimensions of work that we're doing there product-wise to prove that we can manage performance and deliver it for our clients across that full funnel.

‌Alec Brondolo, Wells Fargo.‌

Maybe one for Sarah and one for Michael Sarah. Could you maybe help us think about the percent of Retail Media contribution ex TAC after backing out the $100 million large customer that's generated the ad sales or, I guess, demand generation services. I'm trying to think about like how much of the business pro forma is on the supply side, which seems a little bit safer, more defensible versus -- side.

‌And then maybe for Michael, I guess, could you help us think about early impressions of Criteo's self-service kind of tools? How do you raise the sophistication of self-service campaign setup and management at Criteo right now relative to maybe -- Advantage Plus or Google Performance MAX? And how do you think about maybe closing the capability gap over time? .

Yes. I mean, just to address '26, clearly, we're not going to give long-term guidance as I think you know what is '26 guidance. What I have said is that we are building off a strong base of 200-plus plus growing customers, they are growing faster than the market, and we do expect that to ramp up, especially within 2026, and I would say, in a more normalized macro. In terms of the service layer, this the curtailment largely relates to services, which was about 20% of our base, but this is the only significant client that has services.

So I guess I would say that it's just a slower ramp-up of the services layer. Demand generation, we see coming through Commerce Max, we see the agency growth 50% year-on-year. We see the continued focus on mid- and long-tail brands as well as large brands across the base. And our customers, I mean, I'd say our agency partners and brands, in particular, do want to buy across retailer.

‌So we're not -- we don't necessarily see this as being a key driver for us in terms of supply fees, which I would say are quite fixed relating to the tech. But the demand side fees and the demand fees and demand side of the business, is where we do see scaling up with our agency and brand partners.

I'll take the one on the self-service ability. Look, I would say that Criteo is on a journey as it pertains to that. But we are very excited about the rollout of Commerce Go. And I think we have the benefit there, have seen what has worked in terms of what's come before us and frankly what hasn't. I can tell you from my agency background, really what agency partners are looking for in a solution like that is the ability to manage parameters. They actually enjoy AI automation, but certainly want to have hands on the key critical levers, want to understand placement. They want to have a good understanding of the measurement component.

And so Commerce Go designed with all of those in mind, right? We refer to it as our box solution because it offers those types of parameters and transparencies that other solutions in the market do. And so we think that we potentially will be differentiated with that as we roll it out, and we're excited about that has for the business.

Doug Anmuth, JPMorgan.

It's Bryan Smilek on for Doug. Just thinking about the '25 guide, can you just help parse out the trade-off of contributions from new clients, specifically Microsoft versus macro headwinds that are factored into the guide?

‌And then separately, by vertical overall to social continues to grow well, and you obviously integrated at the SKU level on Facebook and Instagram. Just curious, can you help us think about the demand there and the cross-selling opportunity with the new channels such as social over time?

‌Yes, I can address just in terms of the growth rate for '25. The way that we saw the revision downwards was, I would say about 50-50, so about 50% related to the macro. Some of that is general macro trends, some of that is not -- not starting soon enough, I would say. And the other part relates to the specific -- the two specific clients.

I can jump in on the social piece. And I'm glad that you asked about meta specifically. And our intent, the entire way has been to simplify workflows and guarantee performance is returned as our clients are looking across channels and reaching that full funnel that we talked about before. and that's working quite well with Meta so far.

‌So obviously, we look to take that further out into social platforms so that our clients are not only getting reach, but they're also getting workflow efficiency and performance as they choose us as their solution -- their overall solution rather than using a variety of point solutions that are available in the market. So we're very excited to continue down the path that we've started and the early returns show that we're being successful on both performance and reach for our clients.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Melanie for closing remarks.

Thank you, Mike, Sarah and Todd. That concludes our floor for today. Thanks, everyone, for joining. If you have any follow-up questions, the Investor Relations team is available to assist.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

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Criteo SA published this content on May 05, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on May 05, 2025 at 18:54 UTC.