Criteo In Play-O
Two private investment firms, Vista Equity Partners and Quinti Capital, have submitted a bid to acquire Criteo, Reuters reports.
Criteo hasn’t reacted to the report publicly, nor have its executives decided on a response to the offer, which presumably would entail delisting from the Nasdaq. Regardless, the deal would require approval by Criteo shareholders.
The investment firms are reportedly offering 50% above Criteo’s current market cap of roughly $1.1 billion, which sounds pretty sweet – on the surface.
As recently as a year and a half ago, this offer would have been considered a rude lowball, back when Criteo’s stock was still doing well.
This bid is the latest chapter in a years-long saga. Criteo has explored a sale multiple times without ever closing one, including talks with retail media firm Skai as recently as last year.
Let’s see if the board bites this time.
Crawl Things Must Pass
Publishers want control over which AI bot crawlers access their sites. But good luck getting AI companies to play along.
Last week, Cloudflare introduced Content Signals for robots.txt, which sets new default permissions for different bot types. Effective September 15, Cloudflare will block by default all bots designated for LLM training or agentic use cases, while still allowing search bot access.
Problem is, neither Google nor any AI chatbot honors these Cloudflare classifications, Search Engine Roundtable reports. Cloudflare’s Content Signals have “no effects whatsoever for any crawler or LLM,” John Mueller, a Google search advocate, wrote in a Reddit thread.
Google’s stance might seem surprising considering Cloudflare doesn’t block search crawlers. But remember, Google uses the same crawler for search and AI-based responses, so publishers can’t block Google’s AI Overviews or Gemini AI without sabotaging their Google Search visibility.
But many publishers wonder if it’s even worth bothering anymore to rank effectively in Google searches.
“The traditional Google search business model is dead,” USA Today CEO Mike Reed tells Brian Morrissey at The Rebooting. As such, he adds, USA Today is considering blocking Google’s crawler entirely, while relying more on newsletters and social media distribution.
Is This An Xbox?
Microsoft confirmed long-portended layoffs, officially losing more than 4,800 employees, mainly from Xbox. Additional layoffs in the coming months will reduce Xbox’s global workforce by 20% overall.
In a statement, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma shared a surprising goal, which is “to be one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day.” As a lot of press outlets have pointed out, that’s ambitious to the point of absurdity. (In comparison, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service boasts some 30 million monthly subscribers.)
However, Eric Seufert notes in Mobile Dev Memo that Sharma’s objective might make some sense for cross-platform and mobile-first freemium gaming models. In fact, Microsoft-owned Mojang Studios and King – the developers of “Minecraft” and “Candy Crush” – now report directly to Sharma.
And we all know what freemium means: advertising. Microsoft’s chief strategy officer, Matthew Ball, even floated the idea back in June, though he clarified he wasn’t talking about ads on the Xbox console.
A “Minecraft” mobile app, though? That feels a lot more doable.
But Wait! There’s More!
ChatGPT Ads introduces new targeting controls based on email and phone number lists. [Search Engine Roundtable]
Google Search will let creators know more about their reach. [The Verge]
Microsoft’s “decision layer” strategy. [Tipsheet.ai]
Amazon and Walmart are making aggressive moves to bolster their respective ad businesses. [Adweek]
Dentsu strikes a Meta deal to build plumbing for mass influencer activation. [Digiday]
Wikipedia is battling for the soul of the internet. [NYT]
You’re Hired!
Integral Ad Science appoints former Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones as its new chief executive, replacing Lisa Utzschneider. [release]
Media consultancy Mediasense names Sam Tomlinson as CEO. [Ad Age]
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