Following a brutal 2015 for publicly traded ad platform companies (at least those not named Facebook or Alphabet), the first month of 2016 was, well, not much better. That is until Wednesday, when Criteo reported Q4 revenue growth of 55%, to $407 million (362 million euros). Additionally, the company crossed two symbolic milestones, hitting $1 billion in revenue for the year and surpassing 10,000 clients. Earnings release.
Last June, shares in advertising tech specialist Criteo plunged 7% after Apple declared its intention to add ad-blocking technology to the mobile edition of its Safari browser. Despite that looming threat, Criteo’s mobile revenue is exploding, based on its 2015 financial results issued Tuesday. The company also added 900 customers in the past quarter, reaching 10,000 accounts, and crossed the €1 billion annual revenue mark for the first time.
While the year has been mostly crummy for tech stocks, Criteo (CRTO) has been able to buck the trend. On news of its latest earnings report, the stock price is up a sizzling 20% in early trading. In fact, the company has exceeded $1 billion in revenues for the past year and there continues to be hefty free cash flow generation. Not bad for a company that got its start back in 2005.
Criteo posted its full-year 2015 results on Wednesday and the firm is continuing to show it is the star-performer of the ad tech sector. The company's revenue crossed $1 billion for the first time — far outpacing the majority of the other publicly-traded ad tech companies.
Most of us in the industry know well that programmatic advertising allows marketers to clearly define budgets, set goals, and apply attribution models for campaigns while the technology does all the work. Algorithms do the heavy lifting, analyzing variables in real time to determine the right campaign settings. If you ask online marketing professionals, they’ll say programmatic works, which is why it has maintained its dominance in the ad space. So what exactly are the factors driving programmatic’s growth?
