AI agents have infiltrated retail media. At least, that’s how it felt to big Wall Street advertising and tech investors, who brought a sense of existential dread to Criteo’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday.
The concern among investors is that the open web is doomed – stick a fork in it; the thing is done – and that retail media vendors are only slightly less doomed as human buyers shift to agentic AI channels.
Criteo has always been the crucible of programmatic. For better or worse, it’s a proxy of sorts in the minds of investors for third-party ad tech companies affected by Apple’s iOS updates, for example, and Chrome’s dizzying third-party cookie changes.
Now, Criteo is the emblem for whether third-party programmatic vendors will be important integrations partners for both agentic AI products and walled garden/social media platforms.
“I think there’s a debate across the investor base, not just for Criteo, but for retail media overall, as people start to transact more inside agents,” said one investor.
Another noted that there’s been “a ton of debate from investors” on how AI agents will disrupt the product discovery and transaction flows that vendors like Criteo rely on.
“Sounds like you’re kind of integrating to be part of that,” he hedged, addressing Criteo’s top execs. “[But] just philosophically, how do you see that playing out?”
Unfortunately, the only clear and apparent fact in this debate about how ad tech will fit into the agentic AI revolution is that nobody has any idea, not even the most heavily invested stakeholders.
The agentic revolution
Criteo is an interesting lens for this debate, which is long on speculation and not grounded in reality.
The terms “agentic AI” or “AI agents” came up two dozen times during Criteo’s earnings call, but there were just five mentions of “agency” or “agencies,” all from the Criteo execs in their prepared remarks. Investors did not inquire further.
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Which is weird, because Criteo’s new holdco relationships are a much more important part of the company’s tangible revenue – which is to say, they exist in reality.
But whether and how Criteo will plug into the agentic future is, admittedly, an important question.
And it’s an open question.
“We see the affiliate model as being an underpinning to the trading that will occur regardless of the native ad format and how it might present itself,” said Criteo’s product chief Todd Parsons, in response to that question about Criteo’s philosophical take.
To translate, Parsons is forecasting that AI-based agents and search engines will eventually incorporate affiliate models, which means that publishers, retailers, vendors and tech companies would be able to integrate to drive traffic and conversions with a predetermined percentage fee.
Right now, he added, Criteo is working with data feeds from merchants and retailers to improve how – and how often – their products appear in AI-generated responses.
“We think that some affiliate-type setup will be the clearing capability for the economics,” Parsons said.
The agentic AI companies themselves, however, have been pretty vocal in the other direction.
OpenAI has no affiliate program and takes no affiliate cut when it sends traffic that generates a sale. Even vendors that build their own custom agents or GPTs on top of OpenAI’s models can’t systematically monetize using affiliate links without being reported and delisted.
Perplexity, meanwhile, had a reputation for being most open to traditional advertising integrations, but I’m using the past tense because in August the company laid off its now-former ad group leader, Taz Patel, and deprioritized the ad business. But when Patel was still running Perplexity’s ad sales, he specifically said it wouldn’t pursue an affiliate model, because affiliate revenue would conflict with prioritizing authentic, organic AI responses.
That doesn’t mean Parson’s prediction is wrong. Instagram’s founders also vowed never to show ads, and we all know what happened after it was acquired by Facebook.
But, at least in the short term, the ad tech opportunity for integration and monetization within major consumer AI products, such as Gemini, ChatGPT, Anthropic and Perplexity, wiil be to shape a brand’s organic response rate, not buy or earn its way into the platforms themselves.
“We just don’t subscribe to the notion that agentic platforms will essentially swallow or cannibalize the entirety of the commerce ecosystem,” said Criteo CEO Michael Komasinski.
Search and social
Aside from agentic AI, Criteo has recently integrated with new media partners that only a few years might have seemed like putting someone on the moon. And that’s only half joking.
In September, Criteo was named as the first-ever on-site retail media supply partner for Google Search Ads 360, meaning Google Search advertisers can now extend their campaigns to sponsored product ads across Criteo’s retailer network.
But even more important than the immediate demand from Google, said Komasinski, is Google’s search console as a gateway to potential net-new customers. As Criteo rolls out self-service for the product in 2026, many search advertisers who’ve never tried retail media before could easily get started, since their sponsored product ads are already set up.
And another major channel addition this year for Criteo is Meta.
Komasinski said on the call that social media now accounts for 35% of Criteo’s cross-channel AI-based bidder, Commerce Growth, and Facebook and Instagram are, at the moment at least, the only social media extension in Criteo’s portfolio.
To paraphrase one investor, Criteo must balance the gains from AI-based products, such as its own ad-buying tools and potential data licensing deals with LLM operators, against the headwinds facing retail media and the open web.
A good question would be: How?
“I guess we’ll see how it plays out, but I think Criteo has a part to play in that either way,” Komasinski said.
Perhaps there will be direct monetization opportunities, he said, like an affiliate or performance business. Otherwise, he added, Criteo will keep on working through its retailers to offer new value or experiences that give them “the right to continue to command traffic and serve customers.”
