AgTalk| Conversion is the apex of retargeting: Criteo's Yuko Saito.

Criteo is a "personalized retargeting company" that works with internet retailers to serve personalized online display advertisement to consumers that have previously visited the advertiser's websites. It is headquartered in Paris, France and currently operating in 30 markets around the world.
With 7000 advertisers globally and over 9000 publisher and with 90% of the client continuing with the company, over 40%  of the 1100 people are focused on technology and product development and to use only in-house technology it has become a force to reckon with.
Criteo has been successfully instrumental in seeing to the progress in the foreign market but in new emerging South East Asian market, taking new initiatives in understanding the need of the user, the detailed information and data it collects of the user and combining it with the predictable fact to provide the right type of message to the user.

 Adgully caught up Ms Yoku Saito, Managing Director, South East Asia, to discuss on the business prospect in India, India as a market for technology and product development especially mobile and the role that South East Asian Market will play for the growth of Criteo. Edited excerpts:

 (AG): What is the business model of Criteo from its inception to now? What are the key milestones that they have achieved?

Yoku Saito (YS): So when we started in 2005 we apparently started focusing on recommendation engine, apparently that didn’t monitories so well over the course of development and targeted clients. Around 2008 we applied the recommendation to retargeting solution, that was key master but also I would say in 2013 we started mobile initiative because we knew it was coming in the market and since then we have been really focusing our resource in cross device effort.

AG: There has been a gradual improvement in the marketing and advertising industry, so if you had to give an understanding of the industry that has evolved through years, how would you give that?
YS: The 1999-2000 were the initial days,  the start of the internet, a little bit older but it became mainstream, on those days marketing online meant just about ads. There has been an evolution in Search groups and later the start-up of the social forum like Facebook and other things to tie up people, Video, YouTube, ads and videos they are available online. In India there is a growth in mobile market, opportunity in the market, and for developing technologies for mobile, I think that is a huge trend.

AG: What are the clients you have in India and Internationally?
YS: Our major clients are ecommerce, online retailers, online travellers and some are classified, any clients that have lot of users, lot and lot of products the more the merrier and some kind of conversion so that’s the key, conversion because as you saw we are all about delivering conversion.

AG: So what is the Revenue Model that you work on?
YS: We charge client on the CPC basis, bidding bases used lower the CPC or increase the CPC, if u increase the CPC you are going to have access to better inventory and probably better performing inventory and if you need to control budgets you lower the CPC whatever numbers we deliver multiply it with the CPC that is what we charge the clients for, we pay to the publishers partners on a CPM basis, CPM is quick per thousand, which means that we better perform well in order to gain profit.

AG: In terms of Revenue and advancement of digital, what kind of growth has your brands witnessed in this last couple of years?
YS: So Criteo overall has grown quite a bit, I think we came out with earnings report last year, so globally I think we grew 72%,  this is a global number, in South East Asia I am the head of it including India its much higher with market in India evolving. So especially in the second half of last year we have seen an incredible growth throughout South East Asia and especially India also.

AG: What does Criteo gets on the table for the brand and how has been the response that you have received from your client and that they have received from their consumers?
YS: Since 2013 a lot of large players have been using retargeting, so when we came in, in other market we have to do a lot of presentation on what retargeting is in India market we don’t have to do that, the focus for us is to get the clients to test our product and all this ecommerce players are very focused on return on investment and conversion and overall performance. We have a good track record with 90% retention and around 7000 publishers still working with us. There have been new clients interested in our work and the feedback we get is tremendous.

AG: What are the models that Criteo opts to maintain privacy and transparency for the Consumers?
YS: So in order to identify the user we have two ways one is exact match making sure that the user is same, as opposed to probability match on assumption in which case by default there are fault matches and in the world of retargeting where we are using a lot of personal data and retargeting personal messages because of privacy issue so we provide transparency ,in this way we level with our user to maintain trust.

AG: Apart from clients internationally how important is Indian Client or India as a market for you?
YS: Even though India is a smaller market as compared to the bigger market Europe, America or Japan those in terms of potentials but in terms of population and growth rate India is very important. In comparison to other South East Asian market there is an incredible growth in India not only an organic growth but with all the attention the market is getting its going to grow more and we are hiring local staff and building a local team here.

AG: What trends do you visualise in the retargeting space in India?
YS: Every year since 2010 was known as the year of mobile but I think this is the year of mobile, somewhere during the ending of last year and this year I think we have reached a tipping point, a lot is going to shift to mobile especially in India.