PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - May 6, 2010) - Criteo, the global leader in scalable performance retargeting, today announced a $7 million Series C round of funding from Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), bringing Criteo's total funding to $24 million.
Bessemer, one of the world's most successful and well-respected venture capital firms, joins as an important partner to Criteo's investment syndicate. This strategic investment comes after the relocation of Criteo's corporate headquarters from Paris, France to Palo Alto, Calif., in response to rapid growth and strong demand for its breakthrough retargeting solution.
Criteo is the first company to offer display ad retargeting using a performance-based pure CPC model. In hundreds of case studies, this model has proven to drive post-click conversion rates at levels significantly higher than paid search, offering e-commerce clients a low-risk, high-return solution to retarget ready-to-buy prospects at scale across the Web.
The investment highlights the growing demand amongst e-commerce retailers that are frustrated with spending vast amounts of money to acquire traffic only to have visitors leave their site without making a purchase. Criteo's performance-driven, pay-per-click (PPC) ad retargeting solutions delivers the scale and personalization required to cost-effectively win back lost prospects.
Criteo will use the growth capital to continue its U.S. expansion effort, including the build out of new data centers across the country, as well as for additional infrastructure, talent and R&D investments to optimize its service for customers worldwide. Criteo has quickly built on its proven track record in Europe and is currently running personalized ad retargeting campaigns with more than 400 top retailers in seven countries.
"As a global investor, we have been actively monitoring the technology landscape in Europe and following Criteo for a long time. Their breakthrough retargeting technology, ability to execute and world class management team are very impressive," said Byron Deeter, partner at Bessemer, who also joins Criteo's board of directors with the announcement. "We believe Criteo is in a unique position to play a major role in reshaping the rapidly evolving online advertising landscape."
"Adding proven investors that understand our market and can support our hyper growth, gives us a strong competitive advantage as we build momentum in the U.S. market," said JB Rudelle, CEO and founder of Criteo. "Bessemer has a history of identifying revolutionary companies. Furthermore, from the very start of our discussions, they have been extremely proactive to bring value to our business."
About Criteo
Criteo is the global leader in scalable performance retargeting. Criteo enables its e-commerce customers to re-engage with visitors to their site via personalized display ads across the Internet. These ads are dynamically generated in real-time with individually selected products. The result is greatly increased customer acquisition and retention. Criteo's solution is 100 percent turnkey, easy to integrate and delivers phenomenal ROI since clients pay only for valuable prospects that click-through and return their website on a cost-per-click basis. Criteo displays billions of retargeted banners each month across a wide variety of premium websites and currently has more than 400 satisfied clients from the top e-commerce companies around the world. For more information, please visit www.criteo.com.
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners is a global investment group with offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Mumbai, and Tel Aviv. As the oldest venture capital practice in the United States, BVP has partnered as an active, hands-on investor in Ciena, Ingersoll Rand, Parametric, Skype, Staples, VeriSign, and W.R. Grace, among many others. More than 100 BVP-funded companies have gone public on exchanges in Canada, India, London, and the United States. For more information visit www.bvp.com.
Contact Information:
Contact Information
Jason Throckmorton or Rachel Levine
LaunchSquad
415.625.8555
Criteo(at)launchsquad(dot)com