By next year, theoretically, Criteo should enjoy a more favorable lookback comparison. <\/p>\n
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But for this quarter the comparison is tough. A year ago, Criteo\u2019s fastest-growing non-US vertical was the travel segment, which had been especially strong in Europe and EMEA, CFO Sarah Glickman told investors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Q1 of 2026, we did anticipate growth. In the Middle East we actually earned some really, really good new clients there,\u201d Glickman said. \u201cAnd they just have been slow to start for obvious reasons,\u201d she added (in the wildly understated way<\/a> that senior execs discuss the effects of, say, wars, or the sudden kidnapping-like disappearances of large segments of the US Spanish-speaking consumer segment, when they\u2019re talking investors).<\/p>\n And Criteo is dealing with a consolidation of ad spend to large platform AI solutions, while it\u2019s had relatively slow adoption of its new AI-powered retail ad product, called Criteo GO.<\/p>\n \u201cAdvertisers concentrate spend on established solutions in a more cautious environment,\u201d as Glickman put it earlier in the call, in reference to the plateaued adoption.<\/p>\n Retail media is also not so much the hot trend at the moment. Or at least not enough to power investor optimism.<\/p>\n There is a pipeline for new retailers to stand up their own media networks, said CEO Michael Komasinski, but after many years and now some 235 retailer clients, the growth has tilted from adding net-new retailers to the system to \u201cgetting more out of and making those networks work harder.\u201d That could mean adding conquesting solutions, page-level analytics tools or new formats.<\/p>\n But the biggest new wave to surf nowadays is agentic AI. And Criteo is pinning its hopes to an AI revolution.<\/p>\n