Criteo: ‘We no longer plan our business around the deprecation of third-party cookies’

Criteo’s latest earnings call represented the passing of the baton between outgoing chief executive Megan Clarken, and its incoming CEO Michael Komasinkski, with the former of the pair underlining the overhaul that marked her four-year term of office.

“We no longer plan our business around the deprecation of third-party cookies,” said Clarken, later noting how ad retargeting represented 40% of its business, as it exited 2024, compared to 2020, when she first took the reins.

The fortunes of Criteo, a pioneer of ad retargeting based on the use of third-party cookies, are widely regarded as a proxy for how the industry is faring now such audience targeting tools are losing their utility as a result of privacy expectations around the globe.

The impact of Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention in Safari predated Clarke’s arrival, but it was Google’s confirmation of the planned deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome soon after her arrival that fundamentally altered the digital advertising landscape, Criteo’s strategic moves since.

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