Ad technology and retargeting platform Criteo continues to struggle with revenue gains versus a year ago, due to COVID-19 issues.
Revenues were down 10% to $470 million in its third-quarter reporting period, with net income sinking 74% to $5 million. This follows a similar double-digit revenue drop of 17% in the second quarter of this year.
“We continue to see a significant impact to our business related to the pandemic, continued economic uncertainty, customer demand and supply chain logistics of our clients,” says the company its its third-quarter financial release.
Same-client revenue was down 6% year-over-year, trimming the 13% decline in second-quarter 2020. The bulk of Criteo’s business continues to come from retargeting. Total advertising clients using the platform were up 3% to 20,600 after adding over 200 net new clients, the highest number since fourth-quarter 2019.
Retail media, helped by its growing self-serve service, grew close to 60%; its ecommerce business has grown due to the COVID-19 lockdown.
For example, the company says U.S. online product searches on retailer websites on the open internet grew in share -- up 21 points --- to 30%. Amazon’s share, still the dominant player, declined by 23 points.
Against this backdrop, Megan Clarken, chief executive officer of Criteo, says in prepared remarks that the company looks to “expand our business much deeper into ecommerce and to continue to extend advertising reach for brands and retailers.”
Clarken says the company will focus outside “walled gardens, what we call the Open Internet. We’ll call this opportunity Commerce Media.”
Criteo also announced that it will collaborate with another large DSP, The Trade Desk, on industry wide, open-source Unified ID 2.0, with the intent to replace
third-party cookies that have been a focal point of privacy issues.
Criteo says it has first-party data integrations with more than 20,000 advertisers and 4,700 publishers, as well as its ID graph data of 2.5 billion users, which Criteo says offers better results than third-party cookies.