We use AI as bread and butter in our strategies: Criteo CEO

Paris-headquartered commerce media company Criteo has set its sights on becoming a major player in India’s rapidly expanding digital advertising market.

In an exclusive conversation, Storyboard18 caught up with its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Megan Clarken and spoke with her about the company’s focus and strategic plan for the Indian market.

She also spoke to us about the succession plans for Criteo as Clarken has announced her intention to retire within the next 10-12 months.

Edited excerpts:

What are your key strategies and focus areas for the Indian market?

The Indian market is growing 9.5 percent this year, according to GROUPM, a media investment group. It is outpacing many markets around the world.

So much of that is starting to creep towards the area of commerce media, which is where we're really leaning into. Being the AdTech provider, it helps to take the right message to the right consumers at the right time in the right format.

Commerce media refers to advertising that connects shoppers with products and services throughout the buying journey across both physical and digital touchpoints, linking advertising investment directly to transactions, according to a Criteo blogpost.

Its growth is very exciting for our team and that's really what is spearheading the growth of our team. We have about 300 people in India. That's about 10 percent of our workforce worldwide. So we're very proud of the work that's going on here and the opportunity.

Can you also tell us about some of the key global trends that are driving big strategies and shaping the industry?

The real big boom is coming from commerce media, and commerce media is very new. It is believed that in the next three years, it will outpace the ad spend that's going to social media. So it's going to be huge. The chief reason is that retailers or e-commerce players, like Flipkart, are opening up their inventory for advertising, and it's a very valuable proposition for brands because that advertising is on sites that are closer to the point of purchase.

So, it ensures that the right message is getting to that right consumer at the right time. It's an incredibly valuable medium and one that's really going to push the growth of advertising into the future, and even away from some of the old advertising mechanisms or platforms like linear TV or radio.

We see that coming across to the digital medium and we see that going into commerce media.

What is the future for this 'browse to buy'?

If you think about consumers today, the way they browse to buy has changed quite considerably from what it was five or even ten years ago.

Earlier, they would go to the retail store -- the brick-and-mortar store – after seeing something on television or a pamphlet or brochure in the mail or an email. Today, they start their journey on a social media site. From there, they move to do more, looking at or asking others about their experience of different products on other social media sites.

And then they do deeper research into the brand sites themselves, into the retailers, before finally heading for the retail store online to make that purchase. So, the path of purchase has gotten very complicated, very complex. And that's what opens up this new ability for advertising to reach the consumer at the right time through digital channels.

This whole tech landscape is rapidly changing. How do you balance innovation within your company, so that you don't become overly reliant on, you know, like one particular solution or one particular product?

It's a great question. We have learned this over the last couple of years. It is to make sure that we always have a strategy of multiple pillars. If we just land ourselves on one, the chances are very high that the landscape is going to change so quickly and change from under you that you won't have invested in the right area.

So, at Criteo, for example, when it came to cookie deprecation or how we would get around that loss of signal, we created four different ways to do that. As a result, we've come past this. We've come through on top. So, forever in the space, we have to make sure that we're thinking ahead and that we have many different fallback options along the way.

What are some of the key technological innovations you have seen over the past couple of years that has had a significant impact on your business strategy?

We've been involved with artificial intelligence (AI) for a long time now. We call it AI Lab, which is now 10 years old. We use it as bread and butter in our strategies. And when you think about what we do, we're looking for a particular signal on a particular audience to make sure that we get to the right end. We don't get paid unless that ad gets clicked or a product is sold.

So, performance is at the core of everything we do. Over the last 18 months, we have started to see revenue from AI initiatives. For so many companies, it doesn't happen or hasn’t happened yet. They invest in AI for efficiencies, but not a lot for driving growth. We're doing the latter, which is really exciting.

Moving forward, what is the kind of impact that AI will have on your business?

I think our business will go from strength to strength. The use of data and the ability to use that to predict outcomes, and to do so quickly make our business even stronger. For the industry, it's clear that AI can bring about a lot of efficiencies, but it can also really change the landscape in which we're in. If you think about AI's ability to process data or read the Internet in less than a second, what enables us to do is quite profound.

Criteo's hunt for a new CEO is on. Have you zeroed in on the candidate?

We are working very hard at that. I'm still the CEO and I am 200-percent focused on the job and what I need to do for our people, for our clients, and for our shareholders. And I'm going to continue to do that and make sure that we get the right person in at the right time and that they have skills that are that are needed for this company.

What are the specific skill sets you are looking for in your new CEO to future-proof Criteo for the next couple of years?

I think Criteo has a really remarkable culture.

We're a small company. It is a 3,500-people company, but we all sing from the same songbook and we all push each other to do the best work that we can. So, culture is a very important part of the next person that comes in and takes over from me. The second would be to have relative skill sets around AdTech or a media advertising to just, you know, be able to leapfrog and get into the middle of it very quickly.

Thirdly, my job was really to transform the company and completely turn it around, which is what I did. Our stock price now is close to its high before I arrived. So this transformation has been quite a journey. The strategy has been to set people to know what they need to do.

I think having a track record of execution and lining people up and letting them do their best work would be the next skill set that we really look for from the next CEO.