Home Online Advertising Criteo Joins The Ad-Tech IPO Club, Aims To Raise $190 Million

Criteo Joins The Ad-Tech IPO Club, Aims To Raise $190 Million

SHARE:

ipo-tremorFrench retargeting specialist Criteo has been planning its IPO filing for the better part of a year and it’s finally taking the plunge.

The company filed an F-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission that details its financial performance and other particulars about its business. The company hopes to raise $190 million from the stock sale, though the filing doesn’t say how many shares will be made available to investors. The company is aiming for a valuation of around $2 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing an unidentified source.

The F-1 (as opposed to an S-1, which is for domestic companies) comes a few days ahead of Rocket Fuel’s IPO. That offering is expected to hit Nasdaq on Friday and Rocket Fuel is hoping to raise $108 million or more on the issuing of 4 million shares of stock. Like Rocket Fuel — and the other two big ad-tech IPOs in the last three months, Tremor Video and YuMe — Criteo’s financial record the past year has been mixed.

But the capital infusion from its IPO could help boost Criteo’s competitiveness. The F-1 notes the company competes with giants like Google, Amazon and eBay, along with ValueClick and “smaller, privately held companies,” presumably among them TellApart and Sociomantic.

Criteo plans to use the proceeds from the stock sale for general business operations. It has been working to expand its geographical footprint globally, particularly in the US — where it would appear President Greg Coleman has succeeded in driving revenue growth. The growth outside of Criteo’s native France has been steady since 2010, when foreign sales figures represented 56.7% of total revenues. Over 2011, 2012 and 2013, the percentage of revenues from places other than France have been 70.9%, 81.9% and 85.7%, respectively.

While Criteo has generally been viewed as a retargeting services provider, the words don’t appear in the F-1 filing. For the past year, executives have considered that definition too narrow — and probably too “inside ad tech” to mean much to potential investors. Instead, the company has used the F-1 to describe itself as an ecommerce player that “leverages large volumes of data.” That’s language that Wall Street can readily appreciate.

Also from the F-1, Criteo disclosed the price it paid for mobile analytics firm Ad-X two months ago. It shelled out 9.3 million euros, or US$12.4 million. At the time of that deal, Ad-X had 120-plus customers, including eBay, Expedia and Priceline.com.

On inventory supply, the F-1 revealed that Criteo sent checks to AppNexus and Google representing 30% of its cost of revenue. The company bids through all the big players, including Yahoo’s Right Media, Facebook Exchange, Appnexus, Admeld, the Rubicon Project and PubMatic. And direct-to-publisher relationships are also important.

No surprise: Criteo is heavily fueled by ecommerce, including primarily retail companies but also travel and classifieds. From the F-1, “In 2010, 2011 and 2012 and in the six months ended June 30, 2013, 72.3%, 68.2%, 66.0% and 63.5%, respectively, of our revenue was derived from advertisements placed for retail ecommerce businesses.”

Criteo posted a net profit of $1.3 million in 2012, a 78% drop from $8.1 million in profits in 2011. On the plus side, 2012 revenues were $353.7 million, a gain of 89% of 2011 revenues.

Must Read

In 2019, Google moved to a first-price auction and also ceded its last look advantage in AdX, in part because it had to. Most exchanges had already moved to first price.

Unraveling The Mystery Of PubMatic’s $5 Million Loss From A “First-Price Auction Switch”

PubMatic’s $5 million loss from DV360’s bidding algorithm fix earlier this year suggests second-price auctions aren’t completely a thing of the past.

A comic version of former News Corp executive Stephanie Layser in the courtroom for the DOJ's ad tech-focused trial against Google in Virginia.

The DOJ vs. Google, Day Two: Tales From The Underbelly Of Ad Tech

Day Two of the Google antitrust trial in Alexandria, Virginia on Tuesday was just as intensely focused on the intricacies of ad tech as on Day One.

A comic depicting Judge Leonie Brinkema's view of the her courtroom where the DOJ vs. Google ad tech antitrust trial is about to begin. (Comic: Court Is In Session)

Your Day One Recap: DOJ vs. Google Goes Deep Into The Ad Tech Weeds

It’s not often one gets to hear sworn witnesses in federal court explain the intricacies of header bidding under oath. But that’s what happened during the first day of the Google ad tech-focused antitrust case in Virginia on Monday.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
Comic: What Else? (Google, Jedi Blue, Project Bernanke)

Project Cheat Sheet: A Rundown On All Of Google’s Secret Internal Projects, As Revealed By The DOJ

What do Hercule Poirot, Ben Bernanke, Star Wars and C.S. Lewis have in common? If you’re an ad tech nerd, you’ll know the answer immediately.

shopping cart

The Wonderful Brand Discusses Testing OOH And Online Snack Competition

Wonderful hadn’t done an out-of-home (OOH) marketing push in more than 15 years. That is, until a week ago, when it began a campaign across six major markets to promote its new no-shell pistachio packs.

Google filed a motion to exclude the testimony of any government witnesses who aren’t economists or antitrust experts during the upcoming ad tech antitrust trial starting on September 9.

Google Is Fighting To Keep Ad Tech Execs Off the Stand In Its Upcoming Antitrust Trial

Google doesn’t want AppNexus founder Brian O’Kelley – you know, the godfather of programmatic – to testify during its ad tech antitrust trial starting on September 9.