#e4mAtCannes: Brian Gleason, Chief Revenue Office, Criteo in conversation with e4m team.

I'm Brian. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

I think the most important thing when thinking about commerce media is what is the customer journey. That's really what these D2C marketers are thinking about, which is: what is the appropriate medium to interact with clients? And if that's first and foremost for those clients, that's paramount. So for us at Criteo, our ambition is to create a commerce media ecosystem — meaning connect buyers to the supply side and allow them to activate media, measure, and engage with clients where and whenever they may be on that journey.

I think the most important thing about India — and it's a market that I've always been fascinated with — when I think of India, I always think mobile first. I think innovation and just scale in terms of the size of the population, but it creates this unique environment when we think about D2C in terms of how to engage, where to engage. There's been a lot of innovation for us. From my view looking in, in your mobile environments — we were just chatting a few minutes ago about thinking about mobility first, thinking about the way that you're cashless in many ways, to be able to have no use of cash, mostly credit card, mostly on your mobile phone. I think for if I was a D2C brand, the whole idea in that environment is engagement number one: what is the right content? Where are people spending their time? Number two, what I think is customer experience: am I making it easier for them to purchase my products? And the third is probably discovery: how do I engage in the discovery process? Meaning where's the most appropriate place to be able to find the consumer that's most appropriate for me.

Sure, so I can tell you about Criteo, for example. When we think about the discovery process, for most, somebody's on the page, right? So they're on the page, whether it's a retailer's website, a store display. They're going to see something about that brand. In that process, the others are in the store. So if someone's in a store, sometimes we see a promotion, a coupon, you see at the point of sale. Meaning we see advertising in-store digital screens. The third is what is it when the last mile — so someone's delivering, how does that actually work? And then the fourth is if I just think about branding or upper funnel tactics and watching the video. If I am watching TV or television, how do I see an ad in that environment as well? The connectivity between each one of those environments is so critical because as a consumer, we're not always in transactional mode. Sometimes we're sitting back, thinking about a video or whatnot. How we interact with our consumers along that life cycle is incredibly important.

Sure, so this is the exciting part. When you hear the numbers for commerce media, the first number I had heard was a year ago — I think it was a $40 billion opportunity. Then most recently I heard $130 billion opportunity. So globally, you think about commerce specifically around Asia, whether it's Alibaba, Shopee, Flipkart, Amazon, others — significant. But I think right now, the most recent figures we're hearing, I think it was from GroupM, was saying 130, 132 billion globally. How that moves over the next five years? I think we're going to see significant growth every year because commerce media, again, it's the ability for these retailers to be able to change or evolve their businesses to become media companies in many ways. For consumers, it's enhancing our experience along that journey. But massive potential ahead.

I think the follow-up question was: what do we see in India around them? Flipkart has been a great client of ours. India is unique again because of the mobility and the ability to use mobile phones. All often, our mobile phone is a connective to any moment to be able to transact as long as it's in our hand. If you and I were chatting right now and we said something, I can buy it immediately. So, I think we're just at the beginning to be able to figure out where India evolves with that. But I think mobile transaction is where I really see a lot moving to. And I also think the interaction between my mobile phone and the retail store is going to be next. So for Criteo, or a commerce media company, we see retailers building out these media opportunities. And I think again for India, massive opportunity ahead.

Sure, so I'll reference it. If you think of Walmart, a US company, the reason I mentioned that is the significance of scale. Their CEO recently said that in five years from now, they will make more margin from their retail media business than they will from the sale of goods in their store. That's significant in terms of the scale. Which means essentially they are a media company rather than a retailer or a combination of the two. So when I think about the importance of this, Amazon set the foundation. If you think about Amazon, they own Twitch, they own NFL rights, cricket rights, I believe in India as well. So I think there's this evolution taking place. Not every retailer will go on that journey; everyone's at a different maturity cycle. And I think for the most part, the retailers that I see doing incredibly well are thinking about how do they enhance that consumer experience? Where do they show up at the appropriate time to be able to make it easier to transact with them? As a market, what's the strategy for Criteo for India? We've got a fantastic team in India. India is important for us for two reasons. One is we do a tremendous amount of our development, our engineering work in India. We made an investment two years ago, continue to do that. The talent that we have in-market is fantastic. So Criteo, again an innovation hub, is where we'll continue to move to. For India as a market, you see some of the most advanced brands. So again, our Flipkart relationship we're incredibly proud of. I think we'll continue to enhance that. But more so, if I think about the different geographies in India, how do we expand that footprint? Begin to move and bring not just certain markets but all of India into the retail media — but not only retail media, the commerce media landscape.

I would say there's three. Coming off of this past week, artificial intelligence has been something that's been talked about quite a bit on different panels. I think that'll continue to evolve — whether that's machine learning, whether it's general AI. I think that's something everybody has to think: how is technology enabling my business? The second one specifically to commerce or commerce media is measurement. As we go off-site — which means the way that we interact is either on a retailer's site but also on the open web — how do we measure the effectiveness of that? I think there has to be standardization as that moves forward. I think the last one is the inter‑operability, which means: is it a video ad, a mobile ad, a circular in the physical store? How are retailers bringing these things to life? So how are they using each of the customer interactions to enhance that experience? I think that's significant, which ties back to number one, AI, and number two, measurement. So they're all connected. Seamless integration is the way to go.