EBM: Criteo, the global performance marketing technology company, reports results for 2014, JB Rudelle hello. You are the founder and CEO of Criteo. 2014 was a very achieving year for the company. What would you say are some of the highlights and achievements of last year?
JB Rudelle: Indeed 2014 has been truly a great year for Criteo and in a way, confirming the power of our business model. We have been adding a lot of new clients, while at the same time, maintaining very high client retention rates, north of 90%. We’ve also maintained more than three quarters of our clients with uncut budgets, which create a lot of leverage into the model. We’ve been also adding new mobile services to our base. Now more than 80% of our clients are using a multi-screen solution. Overall, we are much more strategic for our clients. So net-net 2014, we really see that our focus on performance is paying off.
EBM: Looking now at the 4th quarter what were some of the main growth drivers in Q4?
JB Rudelle: So, we had probably three key drivers for Q4. First is the roll out of a new performance engine focusing on self-conversion. Now it has been rolled out on 95% of our client base. This had a particularly strong effect on the holiday season. Number two is we had a net addition of 600 new clients at Criteo and I think this is an all time record for Criteo. At the same time, we had a net addition of 900 new direct publishers, also an all time record. Finally, according to comScore, we now have more than 1 billion unique users as a reach, globally, which is truly massive.
EBM: Now, you had some pretty outstanding growth in the Americas. What is happening there exactly?
JB Rudelle: The U.S. is very interesting and it’s true that for the fourth consecutive quarter we are accelerating the business. So when you think about it, we now have a much bigger scale in the U.S., which gives us better buying power, more client awareness and overall it has widened the gap with competition. Those three elements are reinforcing each other.
EBM: And moving on now to 2015 what will be your main areas of focus this year?
JB Rudelle: This year we have a number of key priorities. First, we are going to keep on focusing on expanding our marketing channels. We also have a lot of improvement in the investment in technology. Especially, I would say, our core engine where we see a lot of potential new things we can do. Also, creative optimization is going to be very exciting. Another major project is going to be cross device. This is a cross device solution that we are starting to roll out aggressively across our client base. On top of that, on the geographical side, we also look at a lot of expansion. Obviously, we are going to keep on expanding our core markets like the U.S. but also we want to do some further progress in new emerging markets like China, like Russia, like Latin America. Overall, I would say 2015 is going to be another very exciting year for Criteo and I look forward to updating you on all of this. Thank you very much!
EBM: JB Rudelle, founder and CEO Criteo, thank you.
