Index Backs Criteo

Criteo, a France-based provider of personalized purchasing recommendations and online advertising, has raised EUR 7 million in Series B funding. Index Ventures led the round, and was joined by return backers AGF Private Equity and Elaia Partners. Aelios Finance advised Criteo on the deal.

PRESS RELEASE 

Criteo (www.criteo.com), which provides real-time, personalised recommendations to millions of users of eCommerce websites and advertising platforms, has secured EUR 7 million of Series B funding led by Index Ventures. The round also includes historical investors AGF Private Equity and Elaia Partners, bringing the total financing of the company to EUR 10 million.  This new funding will allow Criteo, a company founded two years ago and already successful in France, to expand into key markets, including the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Aelios Finance served as financial advisor to Criteo.

Index Ventures partner Dom Vidal said:  “Criteo’s advanced technology enables the broadest range of e-tailers, advertisers and publishers the opportunity to drastically expand their customer base and increase their consumption.  Criteo’s strong team and technology and their desire to address an untapped global market made this an attractive investment proposition for Index.”

Real-time personalised recommendations based on a user’s past browsing behaviour are becoming recognised as the most effective way to help customers navigate enormous online catalogues.  In addition to increasing both the value of and number of items in a customer’s shopping basket, this delivers to eCommerce websites the benefits of the much-lauded ‘long tail’ of niche, rare and hard-to-find products and services.  Criteo’s technology is also used by affiliation and advertising platforms to optimise click-thru and transformation rates. The service is delivered on software as a service model based on plug-and-play web widgets.

The past year has shown a dramatic increase of Criteo technology adoption with 4000 websites installing its widgets, daily generating more than 15 million personalised recommendations to 50 million unique users.

“Online consumers are overwhelmed by irrelevant commercial propositions. They need to be guided to the right products and services suited to their particular needs and tastes,” said Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, CEO and founder of Criteo.  “Effective filtering is central to maximising the return from each and every customer.  Past and real-time browsing behaviour is by far the best proxy for future browsing, clicks and purchases.  Criteo’s algorithm � based on analyzing millions of statistical events � delivers the best accuracy in recommending products and content to users. This new round of funding from Index Ventures will allow us to launch into a number of important European markets, starting with the UK.”

About Criteo

Criteo is the worldwide expert in real-time personalized recommendation solutions and the only one to deliver a cost-effective and scalable turnkey solution to e-tailers, affiliation and advertising platforms, allowing them to realize the long-promised sales benefits of the long tail.  Criteo’s solution is a new generation of collaborative technology that helps clients optimize their search and allows users interconnect with their “twins” � other users with similar affinities � thus helping people with the same interests rapidly find relevant and compelling information, products or services.  A private, venture-backed company, Criteo was founded in 2005 and headquartered in Paris, France, with an office in San Francisco.  For more information visit www.criteo.com