French Company Criteo. You most likely noticed some banner ads appearing on sites you visit displaying some websites or products you previously visited, or that
someone else visited on the same computer.

It’s called “ad retargeting” it’s an engineering challenge, it’s long been
considered one of the next big things in online advertising, and Criteo
is the market leader in that field.

Criteo enables e-commerce companies to re-engage with website visitors
who have left their site via retargeted personalized display ads.
Here’s how Criteo works: if you visit a shopping site without checking out,
your browser will keep a digital trail, or cookie, that says where you’ve
been. Criteo will then buy ad space on other sites you visit and show you
ads for precisely the products you looked at. Since the ads are for products
you previously looked at, the odds that you will click through and complete
the sale are much higher than it would otherwise be.

Criteo was founded in Paris, France in 2005. In 2010, it opened an office in
the Silicon Valley. In 2012, it opened its new headquarters in Paris,
establishing one of the biggest European R&D centers dedicated to
predictive advertising.

The company currently operates in a total of 30 markets around the world,
on five continents – North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia.
In September 2013, the firm filed for an IPO with US regulators to raise up to $190 million.