Criteo Revenue Falls 12% as It Bets on CTV, Social and ChatGPT Ads

Criteo's revenue fell 12% year over year to $416 million in Q3, and profit shrank from $40 million to $6 million, according to the company's earnings report released Wednesday. CEO Michael Kolasinski's successor on the call, Michael Komasinski, did not soften the picture: "This has been a challenging year. Our performance is not yet where I want it to be. The strength of our capabilities and the progress we're making give me confidence in our direction."

The market cap context frames the stakes. Criteo bottomed out below $500 million in March 2020. For the past month it has hovered between $700 million and $750 million — a long way from crisis, but a company still searching for its next growth engine.

That engine, for now, means monetizing new media channels and formats. Criteo introduced CTV support last year. It is pursuing more LLM chatbot integrations after becoming the first ad tech vendor partner for ChatGPT. And it is striking social commerce integrations with TikTok Shop and Meta.

What does the shift change for practitioners?

CTV, AI platform advertising and social media integrations now represent 13% of spend on Criteo Commerce Growth, the company's AI-based optimization product. A year ago that figure was 6%. Those emerging channels are also outpacing Criteo's legacy display web targeting business, which declined year over year.

The company has traveled this road before. Years ago it moved from retargeting into retail media, then one of the highest-growth, highest-optimism channels — a description that still holds. But on the earnings call, investors pressed on whether retail media has matured. They asked whether slowing retail media growth reflects Criteo clients requiring fewer client services, or a general shortage of new retail media opportunities to tap.

The numbers suggest some substance to those concerns, because Criteo shows more room for growth outside retail.

How real is the ChatGPT business?

"ChatGPT has been our fastest growing partnership and channel for some time," Komasinski said. He did not provide a hard revenue number for the LLM business, and percentage growth from a near-zero base can flatter a small line item.

The proof point he offered was market spread. Criteo was live with ChatGPT in seven countries a few months ago. It is now in 89. ChatGPT Ads traffic also spends 15% more per visit on average, he said, which could help secure bigger brand budgets after early tests.

Criteo has had "3,600 clients on and off the platform," Komasinski said — careful wording, because most brands are not yet "always-on" advertisers on ChatGPT or other AI platforms. He expects brands to run holiday test campaigns in Q4, deconstruct the results, and return to test again. He expects revenue growth to ramp next year.

"We've got a great position with a fast-growing channel, fast-growing partner who is introducing functionality at a rapid pace," Komasinski said of the ChatGPT Ads partnership.

Where do social and CTV stand?

Social is the most mature of the three priority channels. Over the past year, social media spend on Criteo's platform and total social campaigns rose 20%.

CTV remains early. "It took us a little time to tune our bidder, build the right campaign structure (and) the right workflow" for streaming TV ads, Komasinski said. He added that performance CTV is "a great fit for what we do," and the mindset shift around CTV as a performance channel is "now coming to fruition."

Is diversification also Apple insurance?

Apple's crackdown on ID infrastructure gives Criteo another reason to move beyond display and retail media, both of which depend on extensive cross-site tracking.

"We're not currently seeing an impact from the Safari changes in iOS 27, supported by our longstanding investments in privacy-safe technology and durable addressability," Komasinski said repeatedly when asked about Apple's changes to WebKit and iOS. One investor noted iOS 27 saw little adoption during Criteo's Q3, meaning the effects have not arrived yet. Komasinski declined to comment further on WebKit specifics.

"Our channel diversification with social, OpenAI and CTV just puts us in a fundamentally different position today than where Criteo was a couple of years ago," he said. Whether those channels become durable revenue pillars, and how quickly holiday test budgets turn sticky, will define whether this turnaround differs from the last one.