• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 29, 2024

Criteo has secured its first media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for impression and clicks metrics across desktop, mobile web, and mobile in-app channels. 

It marks a significant step forward in the maturation of retail media, providing greater assurance that marketers can trust commerce outcomes driven on Criteo’s platform. 

Michael Greene, senior vice president of platform strategy at Criteo, says the team now has time to take a breather.

“MRC accreditation is not a fast process, and anyone who has been through this knows it generally takes years to accomplish,” he says. “It requires a maturity of technology and ability to communicate with clients.”

The process is rigorous and thorough, he said, and the results show the industry that Criteo meets those standards.

Criteo is attempting to change how it manages ad buys.

The goal is to break down the silos between formats and present a combined option --  a strategy that will make it a lot less fragmented.

Retail media is one of the fastest-growing sectors in advertising and is expected to represent over $150 billion in global ad spend by 2026, according to GroupM.  

“Accreditation is one way to invest in greater standardization and defragmentation that lets retail media operate more like standard media,” Greene says. “It’s not on us alone." He adds that cooperation is needed across the ecosystem with retailers, with a need "to understand the importance of accreditation, and brands to have reasonable expectations for the rapidly changing industry.”

Criteo has spent years building a commerce media strategy for advertisers to connect with consumers throughout their shopping journey. In a fortuitous move, the company acquired HookLogic, which supported customers like Walmart and Target, in November 10, 2016, for $250 million and hasn’t looked back since.

To earn MRC accreditation, an independent CPA firm completed the audit of Criteo’s systems and processes. It is then reviewed by an audit committee of MRC member representatives to ensure Criteo’s platform meets the MRC the standards.