There was a time, when advertising was all about smart copy writing and charming the world with interesting campaigns on television and print. But now a days its all about using technology to target the right set of consumers to generate maximum revenue. French ad-tech company Criteo has over the years developed a slew of adtech tools for precision targeting and thereby driving return on investment. Besides it recently acquired Brand Crush to build on its omni channel strategy deployed across retail outlets.
The company posted a 13% decline in revenue $445 million in Q1,2023 when compared to $511 million, during the same period in the corresponding year. It reported a net loss of $12 million in the first quarter of 2023, from a profit of $21 million. In a conversation with BrandWagon Online, Tarajeet Singh, managing director- enterprise APAC, Criteo spoke about effective advertising strategies for brands, marketers and media owners to remain functional, both today and tomorrow. (Edited Excerpts)
Consumers tend to now research online and purchase offline – how does this change the game for brands? What can brands do in order to bring down cost of customer acquisition (CAC)? Where does Criteo come into the picture?
I believe that this phenomenon is not only limited to India alone; it is a reality across the globe. According to our ‘Rise of Savvy Shoppers Study’, 81% of shoppers in India are spending more time online searching for the best offers and values before making a purchase compared to 71% of global shoppers.
The evolution of Internet communication has resulted in a shift where brand searches are not restricted to search platforms but also occur on retail and e-commerce platforms. Consumers compare prices, read customer reviews, and engage in comprehensive research. In today’s marketing landscape, it is crucial for marketers to adopt an omnichannel strategy. At Criteo, we have recently acquired Brand Crush, a company that enables us to offer a holistic omnichannel approach to assist retailers in monetising their assets across both online and physical stores. We are already focused on this approach. We encourage brands to consider how they can create a seamless consumer journey from online to offline, develop an omnichannel strategy, and ensure a consistent experience that fulfill their brand promise throughout the entire business.
How are new tools including commerce grid and commerce yield expected to help retailers and media owners or content creators?
Commerce Yield is our offering when it comes to helping retailers monetise their platforms and their data. It helps retailers create the right sponsored products, commerce display for serving hyper personalised ads at the right time and right platform.
Commerce Grid is our supply-side platform offering which will help not only retailers, but publishers, in general, to monetise their inventory across their platforms, through the commerce grid platform. Commerce Grid harnesses the power of commerce to maximise publisher revenue, amplify advertiser outcomes, and help retailers unlock the true value of their shopper data.
However, both Commerce Yield and Commerce Grid are not yet available in APAC and Commerce Yield has not launched globally too.
As Google brings the shutter down on third-party cookies, how can brands create their own data lakes to ensure communication is maintained?
Our primary focus is assisting brands in selecting the most appropriate creative content and messaging, targeting the right audience, and delivering it at the optimal time across the open Internet. We offer valuable insights to brands by helping them understand their existing audience better and identifying similar potential customers who are likely to be interested in their products or services. Additionally, we analyse consumer behaviour beyond the brand’s offerings, looking at what other products or services they purchase. These insights are valuable for creating effective customer relationship management (CRM) strategies.
Criteo plays a crucial role in enabling brands to achieve this through advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. We process hashed data, such as hashed emails, to create cohorts, which allows us to enrich the information at a group level rather than individually. Utilising our vast amount of first-party data, which includes approximately 720 million browsing activity users (BAUs) and over three billion monthly active users (MAUs), along with 120 different signals, we can effectively serve customers based on their preferences, internet behavior, and past purchase decisions.
The unique aspect of Criteo as a commerce media platform lies in the fact that we have access to data about people’s actual purchases rather than just their search or preference data. This commerce-intent-led data empowers brands to develop more relevant messaging, communication, and audience cohorts for targeted offerings. All of this is made possible through our Criteo ML AI technology.
What do or should a customer expect from a brand when they give their personal data to them?
I believe that the most important aspect from a customer’s perspective is relevance. When a consumer receives highly pertinent advertisements, it becomes an inclusive experience. Instead of being intrusive, such advertising adds value by assisting consumers during their discovery and consideration phases, helping them evaluate different options. This offers significant value. When consumers receive messages or advertisements that are relevant to them, they become more engaged. This heightened level of consumer engagement is powerful for brands. When a consumer actively interacts with a brand’s content and communication, even through advertisements, it contributes to various brand aspects, such as brand consideration. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of the consumer seriously considering purchasing from the brand. Of course, the brand still needs to entice the consumer and provide a compelling proposition for them to buy or convert. However, from consumers’ perspective, relevant advertising itself holds great value, as it is not intrusive but rather inclusive, encouraging them to share their data.
As communication become targetted – what is the role personalisation is expected to play, and when should brands draw the line between communication and over-communication?
Criteo possesses a highly potent dynamic creative optimisation tool that enables us to leverage brand data feeds and dynamically generate the appropriate product and messaging in real-time, tailored to the specific platform the audience is using. This technology is valuable as it eliminates subjectivity when determining which creative approach, whether A or B, will be effective. By allowing AI to optimise communication, we achieve hyper-personalisation. Criteo has developed the capability to execute this process at a large scale. We can generate billions of combinations of creatives and messages in real-time, ensuring they reach the right audience at the right place. This ability empowers brands by delivering better results. For instance, we consider factors such as the product stock-keeping unit (SKU) and personal preferences of consumers to ensure that the creatives feature the appropriate product, messaging, and color combinations that capture attention and foster engagement. These elements play a crucial role in driving engagement, conversions, and maintaining an optimal messaging frequency, avoiding excessive communication with the customer.
How generative AI or machine learning such as ChatGPT and CopyLoad will help take contextual targeting to the next level?
According to a McKinsey report, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personal experiences and 76% get frustrated when this expectation is not met. If you look at generative AI, it’s set to transform the adtech industry and gain a permanent seat when it comes to the agenda. It is about driving more personalised shopping experiences, enabling more retailers and brands to optimise their ad campaigns and improve customer service.
We feel that AI is already being used today where it comes at a basic level to push out targeted ads. But this personalisation is just the beginning. We believe that the only solution to enhance contextual advertising is by using first-party commerce data. With the rise of generative AI, I think this will be pushed to the next frontier and will create more opportunities and hyper-relevant contextual targeting when it comes to delivering the ads.
How inflation changed consumer behaviour? What can a company like Criteo do to understand these and drive revenues?
Inflation has significantly altered consumer behaviour. Rising prices have led to a decrease in purchasing power, prompting consumers to be more cautious with their spending. They are now prioritising essential items, seeking discounts, and becoming more budget-conscious. Additionally, they may opt for alternative brands or products to cope with the impact of inflation.
Now if you look at how Criteo is helping, especially in the retail media, we are helping our partners in monetising their assets, helping people to get the right value for the brands and advertisers and helping create capabilities through our very sophisticated ad products or sponsored products or display and launching platforms such as Commerce Max, which help brands to get more value for the money and also retailers and publishers make more money. In this way, we are helping people generate more revenue.