by Philip Rosenstein , May 4, 2017

Ad tech firm Criteo announced a 29% increase in Q1 2017 revenue year-over-year on Wednesday, with a top line number of $517 million. When excluding traffic acquisition costs, revenue hit $210 million.

“This was our 14th quarter as a publicly listed company, and our 14th quarter where we beat analyst expectations,” Eric Eichmann, Criteo CEO, told Real-Time Daily.

The Americas saw the strongest increase in growth, exhibiting a 38% uptick in revenue, compared to 28% in APAC and 25% in EMEA. Eichmann explained that the difference can be partly attributed to the European market being the most mature, offering smaller opportunity for growth.

Eichmann also pointed to the acquisition of HookLogic as a reason for the strong revenue increase in the Americas.

Bolstering the expectations-busting numbers were three major reasons, explained Eichmann. “Existing clients spent 15% more than they did last year with us. We further developed our proprietary technologies and we were able to offer a significant increase in available inventory through our platform.”

Criteo boasts a 90% client retention rate, with a total of about 15,000 clients.

When discussing the technological enhancements that played a role in Q1 results, Eichmann spoke of Criteo’s device graph, which helps retailers better understand and unify marketing opportunities across digital devices.

“For example,” Eichmann continued, “a company like Macy’s does not have the technological expertise to compete with Internet retailers like Amazon in targeted advertising. We offer our clients the ability to accurately target potential consumers at scale, in the hope of rivaling the ubiquitous online retailers.”

Eichmann also pointed to header-bidding and kinetic design enhancements (basically programmatic creative), as current and potential drivers of growth.

Looking forward, Criteo is working with partners on an alpha iteration of a new video ad product that can generate video creative and music in a programmatic fashion.

“We are constantly optimistic about our technological developments, but not everything works when you scale,” Eichmann said. “We’ll have to wait and see over the next year or two how this new initiative fares in the global marketplace.”

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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