Criteo (CRTO) Citi’s 2026 Global TMT Conference summary

Strategic focus and business overview

• Commerce intelligence platform leverages identity, product, and shopper data to optimize media investment in a fragmented, AI-driven ecosystem.

• Maintains the third-largest identity graph and product catalog globally, normalizing 25 billion SKUs into a usable set of 5 billion.

• Focuses on three priorities: agentic commerce innovation, retail media leadership, and revitalizing performance media through cross-channel strategies.

• Recent leadership transitions include a new CFO with deep company and industry experience, and an interim Chief Product Officer setup.

• Strategy remains consistent despite leadership changes, emphasizing agility and ongoing improvement.

Financial performance and client trends

• Early 2023 saw budget softness among large clients, leading to a cautious outlook and a downgrade in August.

• Trends stabilized by July, with new business performance in the U.S. up 24% year-on-year and qualified pipeline up in the mid-30s.

• Commercial teams are focused on offsetting client fluctuations by driving new business and competing for shifting budgets.

OpenAI partnership and agentic commerce

• Partnership with OpenAI is based on shared focus on commerce outcomes and optimizing advertising inputs and outputs.

• OpenAI ad platform now in 51 markets with over 2,000 advertisers; 80% of paid referral traffic is new to brand, and conversion rates are 1.5x–2x higher than traditional search.

• Budgets are expected to shift from CTV, social, and some search tactics to OpenAI due to superior performance.

• Most clients require about two months of testing before scaling spend; holiday season and Q1 are key milestones for adoption.

• Contribution to growth is expected to become meaningful by 2027, with plans to provide more specific guidance.