Q] Retail Media is currently one of the fastest growing advertising channels in India. It is projected to grow by 9.9% to reach $125 billion in 2023, according to a GroupM report. What are the emerging trends and opportunities in the space?
Smith: To keep up with the pace of growth of retail media and investment flowing in the retailer ad space, both brands and retailers are focused on building capabilities to improve the customer experience. Over the past couple of years, retailers have become media owners. They are trying, testing and learning ways to scale up and build the ecosystem that support customer journeys across all touchpoints. They also want to standardize the retail media measurements and are collaborating to come up with one.
Singh: The APAC region has one added layer that is marketplaces. So, both marketplaces and retail media are trying to create more value for the audiences they have. It is an exciting time for Criteo as we are working to help those players create that value. Most players in India and South East Asia are under profitability pressure. To stabilize the revenue, they need to have a certain Gross Merchandise Value. This is where Criteo can help them.
Smith: Amazon made $38 billion from ads in 2022. While Amazon has over seven percent share in the global digital ad market, most retailers have less than one percent share so there are a lot of opportunities in this domain.
Q] Is retail media innovating enough on fresh ad formats?
Smith: Criteo has come up with a video advertising solution powered by AI and Shopper Graph. Our video advertising comes with performance capabilities, covering multiple touchpoints and leveraging audience-first ad solutions like in-stream and out-stream video, mobile app, web traffic, consideration, and retargeting.
Q] What are your expansion plans for India?
Singh: Criteo, which has been investing in India for the past three years, will be investing even more heavily in the coming days, as this is a very important market for us strategically. We are setting up a technical operations and analytics centre which will cater not only to India, but the rest of the APAC region as well. The centre would be based in Hyderabad but people from across India are being hired to work here. Over the last three years, our staff strength in India has quadrupled. It stands at 150 at present. More investments and expansions are on the cards.
Q] What are your growth projections for India?
Singh: We don’t give out country specific projections.
Q] Can you share your ad rates? Are they higher or lower than Google?
Singh: We cannot share the ad rates but can confirm that our rates are competitive. Rate differs from category to category and product to product.
