Criteo Cuts Their Revenue Projections for 2018 by 22% ⇥ theguardian.com
Earlier this month, Apple launched a new version of its mobile operating system, iOS 11.2, which disables the solution that some companies in the advertising ecosystem, including Criteo, currently use to reach Safari users. As a result, we believe the projected 9%-13% ITP net negative impact on Criteo’s 2018 Revenue ex-TAC relative to our pre-ITP base case projections, communicated on November 1, 2017, is no longer valid.
We are focused on developing an alternative sustainable solution for the long term, built on our best-in-class user privacy standards, aligning the interests of Apple users, publishers and advertisers. This solution is still under development and its effectiveness cannot be assessed at this early stage. Should it not mitigate any ITP impact, we believe the ITP net negative impact on Criteo’s 2018 Revenue ex-TAC, relative to our pre-ITP base case projections, would become approximately 22%.
Alex Hern, the Guardian:
Internet advertising firms are losing hundreds of millions of dollars following the introduction of a new privacy feature from Apple that prevents users from being tracked around the web.
[…]
With [Criteo’s] annual revenue in 2016 topping $730m, the overall cost of the privacy feature on just one company is likely to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
It’s hard to feel sympathy for a company that earned its money by encouraging website owners to embed their JavaScript without requiring they disclose their tracking practices, forcing their way around my cookie preferences, and trying to use another loophole to bypass users’ privacy settings. I’m very okay with Criteo getting their just deserts.