Criteo Reports Q3 2026 Revenue of $416 Million, Cuts Outlook

Criteo (NASDAQ: CRTO ) reported third-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company's third-quarter earnings call has been provided below. This transcript is brought to you APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit for a consultation.

View the webcast at Summary Criteo's third-quarter 2026 performance was challenging, with a focus on stabilizing spending among large clients and building new business momentum. The company is expanding its commerce capabilities across channels such as CTV, AI platforms and social media, with notable investments in CTV expected to double the Q3 run rate by Q4. Retail Media Contribution ex-TAC grew 10% in Q3, despite a $20 million impact from client scope reductions, with plans to expand auction-based displays and AI-driven retail media formats.

Financials showed a 9% increase in media spend to $1.2 billion, with revenue at $416 million and contribution ex-TAC down 15% at constant currency. Criteo is maintaining a cautious 2026 outlook, with an expected decline of 10% to 12% in contribution ex-TAC at constant currency and an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 30%. Management is focused on improving financial predictability, efficiency and aligning capital allocation with shareholder value. Future priorities include strengthening Performance Media, scaling new channels and reinforcing leadership in Retail Media with a focus on AI and self-service capabilities.

Full Transcript OPERATOR Good morning and welcome to Criteo's third quarter 2026 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please press the star key followed by zero. After the prepared remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions.

To ask a question, please press star then number one. To withdraw a question, press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Melanie Dombre, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications.

Please go ahead. Melanie Dombre (Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications) Good morning everyone and welcome to Criteo's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining us on the call today are Chief Executive Officer Michael Komasinski and Chief Financial Officer Frano Magogni, who are going to share some prepared remarks. As usual, you will find our investor presentation on our website now, as well as our prepared remarks and transcript after the call.

Before we get started, I would like to remind you that our remarks will include forward-looking statements which reflect Criteo's judgments, assumptions, and analysis only as of today. Our actual results may differ materially from current expectations based on a number of factors affecting Criteo's business. Except as required by law, we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements discussed today. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our earnings release, as well as our most recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q and the Registration Statement on Form S-4 related to our proposed redomiciliation filed with the SEC.

We will also discuss non-GAAP measures of our performance. Definitions and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP metrics are included in our earnings release published today. Finally, unless otherwise stated, all growth comparisons made during this call are against the same period in the prior year. With that, let me now hand it over to Michael.

Michael Komasinski (Chief Executive Officer and Board Member) Thanks, Melanie, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I'd like to welcome Connor to his first earnings call as CFO. Connor has been with Criteo for eight years, most recently as our Chief Strategy Officer. He knows the business well, making this a seamless transition, and I'm pleased to have him in this role as we strengthen execution and focus on shareholder value.

This has been a challenging year for Criteo. 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. Much of the pressure this year has been concentrated in reduced spending from several large enterprise clients in performance media and the previously communicated client scope reductions in retail media.

Encouragingly, spending trends among those large performance media clients remained broadly stable throughout the quarter while we continue to build new business momentum. Our strategy has been to extend our commerce capabilities across channels and the full shopping journey, helping clients reach consumers wherever they discover, consider and buy. Our investments in CTV, app, social and AI platforms are all part of that plan. This quarter we're seeing more evidence of those investments translating into commercial traction, with CTV a growing example that I'll discuss in more detail.

Commerce Intelligence underpins this strategy. Our combination of large-scale commerce data and AI infrastructure helps advertisers turn shopping intent into sales. We're extending those capabilities across more channels, including AI platforms like ChatGPT Ads to capture additional advertiser budgets and through AI assistance and page intelligence to help clients monetize new shopping experiences. Together, these efforts make our Commerce Intelligence more valuable to advertisers and retailers, building a foundation for Criteo to power more of the shopping journey as AI creates new ways for consumers to discover and buy products.

We now need to translate this progress into stronger financial performance. That means strengthening commercial execution, ramping new clients, deepening existing relationships, and helping retailers grow their media businesses. We're also expanding self-service and agency workflows to make our capabilities easier to access, improve productivity and lower our cost to serve. Challenges remain, but we're addressing them directly with a clear focus on execution and cost discipline.

Let me start with CTV. We started a little over a year ago, and we believe our commerce capabilities give us a compelling opportunity as advertisers increasingly look to CTV to drive measurable sales. That's where Criteo has a right to win. Our differentiated commerce audiences allow advertisers to reach their ideal consumers on CTV based on real shopping behaviors and purchase intent.

Combined with our ability to connect campaigns across channels and optimize toward a purchase or other outcome, this makes CTV a more powerful performance channel for advertisers. This morning we announced the global expansion of our CTV offering. Building on our early success in the US, we'll launch in Brazil and Mexico by year end, followed by major markets across Europe, Canada and Australia. In 2027, we're beginning to see the returns on our investments in performance CTV, with that differentiation translating into growing commercial traction.

More advertisers are now running campaigns through our offering across several verticals including apparel, travel, consumer electronics and automotive. For example, the global travel platform generated a 61 times return on ad spend while delivering 9% lower cost per acquisition compared to their display campaign serving to the same audience. Our pipeline is expanding rapidly and we're winning budgets in competitive evaluations. We've also secured several renewals with advertisers increasing their investment and committing larger budgets as they see meaningful results.

Based on this momentum, we're on track to double our Q3 CTV run rate in Q4. We're putting more commercial resources behind this opportunity as demand and repeat spending grow. We're also expanding our reach across AI platforms. Our OpenAI integration has grown from seven countries last quarter to 89 countries.

Europe is particularly important given our deep advertiser relationships and established presence across the region. We're building our presence in an emerging advertising channel with meaningful long-term growth potential, positioning us to capture additional advertiser budgets. As adoption scales, we bring differentiated capabilities that help advertisers drive results in this new channel. Our rich commerce audiences help them reach relevant consumers.

Our Prompt Smart Ads tailor messaging to the intent people express in their conversations, and our measurement helps advertisers understand the results and optimize their spending. For example, the Turkish Airlines campaign activated through Criteo used Prompt Smart Ads and generated a 183% increase in site landings from ChatGPT Ads. Users exposed to the ads also spent 15% more time per visit. We continue to see interest in testing ChatGPT Ads, and average spend per client is increasing modestly.

This is still an early market and spending has yet to scale. Our focus is on turning tests into repeat campaigns and larger budgets. We expect the contribution from ChatGPT Ads to build in 2027. As we develop these newer channels, we're applying the same experience we've gained in social.

In Q3 we saw approximately 20% growth in both media spend and the number of campaigns on social compared to a year ago. We've built a business that demonstrates how our Commerce Intelligence can drive performance beyond the open web. Together, CTV, AI platforms and social now represent 13% of Commerce Growth campaigns, up from 6% a year ago. By expanding across these newer channels, we can address more of our clients' budgets and give them a more connected view of the consumer across the shopping journey.

Beyond these channels, we also see meaningful opportunity to grow within our existing client base through apps. Many advertisers run web campaigns with us and have their own apps but have yet to activate app campaigns with Criteo. Advertisers combining app and web generate approximately twice the sales at a similar return on ad spend compared with web alone. This gives us a clear opportunity to deepen client relationships and capture additional performance budgets.

This diversification puts us in a fundamentally stronger position today. We're not currently seeing an impact from the Safari changes in iOS 17, supported by our long-standing investments in privacy-safe technology and durable addressability. We're also making our capabilities easier for advertisers to access and use through self-service. GO gives clients direct access to campaign tools powered by our AI and commerce data.

It simplifies how they launch, manage and optimize campaigns. More than half of our small clients globally use GO campaigns. GO now serves approximately a third of Commerce Growth customers and represents about 10% of Commerce Growth revenue. We've learned a lot about how clients adopt GO this year.

Our marketing has generated strong interest in GO, including hundreds of thousands of visits to GO pages, and activation is higher when our teams help clients get started. We're phasing out standalone self-registration while using agentic tools to automate key onboarding steps and help clients get started more easily. Once clients are up and running, they can manage and optimize campaigns themselves. As more campaigns move into these self-service workflows, we're improving productivity and lowering our cost to serve.

Over time, we also expect more clients to access our capabilities through AI agents. All major agency holding companies are currently testing our Model Context Protocol, or MCP, which connects their AI tools with Criteo solutions and enables planners to build and activate campaigns using natural language. These connections allow agencies to bring Criteo solutions into their own AI tools. In performance media, early testing includes reporting, audience creation and selected campaign operations.

In retail media, we currently provide retailer insights and reporting, with activation coming soon. Our work on MCP is part of broader progress with agencies. Spend through agencies has increased 5% year to date, ahead of direct client trends. We're deepening these relationships by combining our commerce data with agency assets, developing agentic capabilities together, and extending our partnerships across more of our products.

Turning to our third quarter performance media results, media spend trends improved sequentially despite reduced spending by several large enterprise clients discussed last quarter. The reductions primarily reflected client-specific decisions and softer demand in certain verticals. Encouragingly, trends among large clients remained broadly stable throughout the quarter. We've also strengthened our commercial execution with tangible progress and new business momentum.

Our pipeline continues to strengthen, with open opportunities up 72% year over year, with agencies representing more than half of our pipeline. Spend from new business grew 13% year over year in Q3, with the share of new enterprise client spend doubling year over year. We expect these new clients to begin ramping in Q4 and reach full run rate in the first half of 2027. While the challenges affecting several large enterprise clients remain a near-term headwind, we're building the foundation for improved performance in 2027 through stronger commercial execution, broader client relationships and a growing contribution from new channels.

The opportunities I described in CTV, social, app and AI platforms give us more ways to deliver results and earn additional budgets. Our focus is clear: ramp the clients we've signed, grow our share of existing accounts and continue to improve execution in the Americas. As we head into Cyber Week and the holiday season, our teams are ready and excited to help our clients drive strong results. Turning to Retail Media.

We're building a more diversified business across clients, markets and products that gives us more ways to grow and greater flexibility to meet retailers' demands. Retail Media Contribution ex-TAC grew 10% in Q3 across our underlying client base, supported by advertiser demand and adoption of new formats. We're expanding demand on several fronts. During the quarter, the number of brands on our platform reached 4,700 and media spend grew 22%.

We're making it easier for brands and agencies to invest across our network. Commerce Max unifies planning, activation and measurement, including campaigns sold directly by retailers, so advertisers can manage and scale campaigns across retailers in one place. We're also expanding capabilities on retailer sites. More retailers are adopting conquesting, helping brands reach shoppers considering competing products and attracting incremental budgets.

Our Mirakl partnership further broadens demand by enabling third-party sellers and mid- to long-tail advertisers to run campaigns across a growing retailer network. Together, these advertisers represent a meaningful source of incremental demand within our existing retailer network. New formats continue to drive growth. Auction-based display remains our fastest growing retail media format.

It's now live with more than 95 retailers, twice the number at the start of the year. Auctions account for more than half of on-site display, and we're on track to grow display spend by close to 50% this year. Auction-based display gives brands a more flexible, performance-driven way to reach relevant shoppers while helping retailers attract more demand and generate more revenue from on-site inventory. We believe retailer AI assistants create a new opportunity to connect shoppers with relevant products and generate revenue for retailers.

Following our initial launch with Albertsons, we're working to bring sponsored recommendations to additional retailer AI assistants, including THG Ingenuity in the UK. These recommendations connect what a shopper is asking for with relevant products and advertiser demand. They create a new source of revenue for retailers within a personalized experience designed to help consumers make a purchase. As agentic AI creates new ways for consumers to shop, we expect online commerce to grow and retail media to grow with it.

E-commerce traffic across our retail partners continues to grow even as consumers increasingly use AI assistants. Those assistants are creating new paths to discovery and bringing qualified shoppers to retailers. They may also help consumers complete purchases they might otherwise abandon, expanding the opportunity for online commerce. Retailers remain central to that journey.

They provide the assortment, fulfillment, loyalty programs and payment capabilities that turn interest into a purchase. Consumers also continue to search brand websites and retailer sites alongside AI assistants. As shoppers move across more touch points, retailers have an opportunity to make their own sites more relevant and valuable. Page intelligence brings merchandising, advertising and shopper engagement into one optimization system.

Retailers retain control over product selection, ranking and monetization. We bring the technology and advertiser demand to help them improve product discovery, show relevant sponsored recommendations, and grow revenue. We're now testing it with one of our largest retail partners. That innovation builds on strong retailer relationships.

Four of our largest retail partners have recently renewed their agreements for multiple years. Existing partners, including Douglas, Lacone and Metro, are preparing to expand with us into additional markets. We're also adding partners across regions, including Netino in EMEA, El Puerto de Liverpool in Mexico, Anigo in Japan, Adore Beauty in Australia and PayU in India. Looking to 2027, we expect a more supportive backdrop for the business.