Criteo is subject to a takeover bid, further proving private equity’s continued interest in ad tech

According to media reports, the recently submitted bid from private equity firms Vista Equity Partners and Quinti Capital jointly values the ad tech company at more than $50 per share, citing people familiar with the matter, boosting the company’s market capitalization, which fell 23% year-over-year prior to the speculation, to above $1 billion.

The offer represents a premium of more than 50% to Criteo’s recent share price and values the company at approximately $3.7 billion on an equity basis, per the initial Bloomberg report. Reuters subsequently reported that Criteo’s board has yet to respond to the proposal, while the bidders are said to view the company’s AI capabilities as an opportunity to expand retailers’ and advertisers’ use of its platform.

Vista Equity (again)

The name Vista Equity Partners will ring a bell with experienced observers of the sector, with the PE firm shelling out a reported $1.4 billion for TripleLift in 2021, and the same firm holding a significant stake in Integral Ad Science, although it completely exited its IAS stake after Novacap took IAS private last year (see above).

Incidentally, IAS announced a shakeup of its C-suite this week, with Lisa Utzschneider ending her seven-and-a-half-year run at the helm of the ad verification firm, making way for former Slack and Bumble chief executive Lidian Jones, who takes the role as CEO, effective immediately.

Takeover speculation for Criteo is hardly new, with speculation over a potential take-private bid circling for three-plus years, with names such as Microsoft, Walmart, and The Trade Desk all being thrown into the mix in that time; a period that has seen it switch up its leadership, with CEO Michael Komasinski taking the reins in early 2025.

As mentioned, Criteo’s stock has experienced mixed fortunes in that time, even though its long-looming Sword of Damocles, i.e., Google’s third-party cookie deliberations, has receded, and it was the first ad tech company to announce a partnership with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. So, the question remains, just where do PE firms see untapped value?

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Looking at Criteo’s Q1 earnings report, which posted a 6% year-over-year revenue decline, although leadership forecast a return to growth by the end of the year, along with the news that two major retail media clients would soon reduce their use of the platform. Executives were quizzed on whether Criteo’s (much-trumpeted) self-serve AI workflows would reduce agencies’ operational dependence on Criteo, potentially compressing take-rates, by equities analysts who (by-and-large) assessed Criteo as underperforming its peer set.

In the wake of the initial reports, Matt Barash, chief commercial officer at Nova Studio — itself an ad tech firm backed by PE firm Fort Point Capital — took to LinkedIn to note that public markets typically view ad tech stocks as vulnerable to “cyclical advertising exposure, rather than durable software platforms.” However, he pointed to Walmart’s recent $1.4 billion purchase of Vibe.co (see above), a company that specializes in onboarding SME advertisers to the burgeoning CTV sector, as an alternative way to assess the long-term growth of ad tech firms.

Speaking at an event hosted by IAB Europe this week, industry analyst Ian Whittaker, managing director of Sky Liberty Advisors, noted how the continued growth of digital advertising could potentially be (partially) attributed to the interest of such firms, noting the public markets’ risk-aversion, whereas PE firms can view ad tech as a “risk-reduction” tool. “In the public markets, you’ll get paid for growth, but funnily enough, what you get paid more for is risk-reduction,” he said during a Q&A session with attendees.

What’s under the hood?

Diving deeper into Criteo’s most recent earnings report, the ad tech firm could similarly be viewed as a retail media platform for long-tail retailers; management was quick to point out that it has relationships with approximately 235 leading retailers globally, thus differentiating it from platforms such as Amazon Advertising or Walmart Connect.

During the past year, Criteo has been rolling out and simplifying its strategy to further win over such marketers by unifying its offerings into a single, easy‑to‑buy “Go” brand that behaves like a demand-side platform, without necessarily calling it one, using Criteo’s retail signals and making much of its AI investments to optimize performance across channels, including the open web, CTV, and social channels from one place.

Similarly, it’s targeting large agency groups by designing its platform to plug into their emerging agentic ad stacks to help with campaign reporting, creative, and campaign management, with the aim of breaking siloed budgets (i.e., search, social, and open web), with a view to pulling them into Go. 

Speaking recently with Digiday, Todd Parsons, chief product officer, Criteo, compared Go directly against Google Performance Max and Meta Advantage+, as well as smaller self‑serve/performance players like AppLovin, RTB House, noting its USP as its independence (compared to walled garden players) and ability to offer dynamic budget allocation across channels based on outcomes. 

“Across all of our products, we’re trying to use that pattern of more AI development with smaller, discrete products,” he said, “more public APIs for those so that products like this can basically use AI tools to get done faster.”