July 1st-July 7th // Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. Is Criteo actually going to sell this time?
Tune in to the latest AI Edge Podcast episode with Hightouch Co-CEO Kashish Gupta!
Hightouch Co-Founder and Co-CEO Kashish Gupta joins Shiv & Myles on the AI Edge Podcast to discuss why AI still struggles to stay on brand, what agentic marketing actually looks like, and why the future belongs to marketers who combine AI insights with human judgment.
They also explore the rise of the Agentic CDP, why media agencies still provide critical accountability, and why open APIs will shape the next generation of marketing technology.
🎧 Listen now on:
🍎 Apple
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📺 YouTube
Top Stories 👁
Vista Equity, Quinti Capital offer to buy French ad tech firm Criteo🔒
Sources: Reuters, MediaPost
July 6th, 2026
Summary: Vista Equity Partners and Quinti Capital submitted a buyout offer last week for Criteo that values the ad tech company at more than a 50% premium above its recent share price, according to multiple news outlets. Criteo hasn't decided how to respond yet, and a company spokesperson declined to comment on the rumors.
The market liked the news. Criteo's US-listed shares jumped as much as 29%🔒 on Monday, giving the company a market cap of about $1.16B. That's a small number relative to Criteo's business; the company pulled in $1.9B in revenue last year and adjusted EBITDA of $407M.
Criteo's Q1 revenue was down 6% to $425M, guidance got cut, and shares fell as much as 20% after losing $75M+ in spend commitments from Uber Eats and Target Roundel.
The company has been in the M&A rumor mill on a somewhat regular basis in recent years.
Opinion: With a market cap of $1.16B and 2025 revenue of $1.94B, investors are valuing Criteo at less than one year's worth of revenue. Criteo is trading at roughly 0.6x revenue, while ad tech and software companies with growth stories often trade at 3-5x revenue or more. Sure, Criteo hasn’t been a growth story for a number of years now, but it’s not like the company is bleeding money; it’s highly profitable! A profitable business in a high-growth sector trading below 1x revenue is the kind of discount PE firms look for.
Criteo feels like a company that’s been preparing for its “moment” for years now. That “moment” would be the maturation and consequent consolidation of commerce media. Once that happens, there would be clear winners and losers, and many retailers would probably decide that trying to run an ad business on their own isn’t worth it. They would likely hand their retail media businesses over to the largest intermediary in the space and happily cash their checks. That intermediary should be Criteo. And if agentic commerce takes off? That should only be more wind in Criteo’s sails.
But no one is quite sure when that moment will come. Enter private equity. PE can get a great deal right now, come in and do some operational clean-up, refocus the business, and stay the course until the moment arrives.
For Criteo, going private (at a nice premium, to boot) would allow the company to build strategically and patiently, without the short-term pressures of being a public company.
Everyone wins. Get the deal done!
Other Notable Headlines 👀
LiveRamp launches brand campaign on Netflix as Publicis deal fuels scrutiny of its neutrality🔒 - LiveRamp's new campaign centers on trust and positions the platform as a secure data foundation for AI-driven marketing. The 15- and 30-second spots will air for five months.
Since Publicis announced the $2.2B LiveRamp acquisition in May, its rivals, including Omnicom CEO John Wren, have questioned whether the platform can remain neutral once it is owned by a competing holding company. WPP CEO Cindy Rose outright said her agencies stopped using LiveRamp to retain independence. One former Dentsu exec predicts a gradual client exodus, pointing to a similar pattern after IPG bought Acxiom in 2018. All good though, because Publicis obviously knew this would happen. Right? RIGHT?!
Supreme Court affirms Fourth Amendment protections for location data🔒 - The case traces back to a 2019 robbery investigation in Virginia, where police cast a wide net for a Google phone using location data near the crime scene. The ruling found that police need a warrant before pulling someone's detailed movement history, even for a brief stretch. The court treated Google Location History as even more revealing than the cell tower data addressed in an earlier case, underscoring just how precisely location data can identify a person's movements. For advertisers, that's a reminder of how granular data used for targeting and attribution carries legal exposure. Meanwhile, New Jersey became the latest state to ban the sale of precise location data (within a 1,750-foot radius) and other sensitive data that could identify someone's race, religion, or immigration status.
CTV buyers are getting the show-level performance optimization they've always wanted - A new integration between contextual data provider Peer39 and DSP Pontiac Intelligence is giving advertisers more granular data from their CTV campaigns such as cost per acquisition and effective CPM by individual program, across networks, and content categories. InterMedia Advertising beta tested the solution on a campaign for detergent brand Laundry Sauce, using the data to shift budget toward better-performing shows. That shift drove a 2.5x lift in page view-to-cart conversion rate. Other ad tech providers, including Viant, IRIS.tv, and Beeswax, are reportedly building similar capabilities, suggesting this kind of granular reporting could soon become standard across CTV buying.
Dentsu strikes Meta deal to build plumbing for mass influencer activation🔒 - Dentsu is integrating Meta's Creator Marketplace and Partnership Ads tools with its Dentsu.connect platform via API. The setup lets Dentsu handle social listening, creator vetting, and paid campaign launches from one dashboard, combining its own data with Meta's. The UK arm has already run early tests, and apparently work that used to take days, like signing creators and getting paid posts live, can now wrap up within hours. Dentsu plans to bring the tool to the US next and is eyeing similar partnerships with other platforms.
Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓
Spotify Ad Exchange is now directly integrated with Amazon DSP - Amazon DSP users can now buy Spotify's music and podcast ad inventory directly. The integration also expands access to new markets, including Australia, Japan, and India, and offers buying options such as programmatic guaranteed deals and open auction video.
Meta names CMO Alex Schultz first chief data officer - Schultz is shifting from CMO to a new role focused on AI analytics, with a top priority of building a "semantic" layer across Meta's data warehouse over the next six months. Denise Moreno steps in as the new CMO.
Microsoft cuts 4,800 jobs, as Xbox unit downsizes and plans to spin off four gaming studios - Xbox is losing about 20% of its staff. Four gaming studios, including Double Fine and Compulsion Games, will become independent or join new owners.
The Economist launches new audio and video tier targeting younger subscribers🔒 - Economist Play bundles video shows, podcasts and newsletters into a $15/month tier. It's part of a broader push to attract younger, more gender-balanced audiences who'd rather watch and listen than read.
Google Search Console adds social and video platform properties - Creators can now track how their Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube content performs in Google Search and Discover.
Advertisers await programmatic pause ads - Brands like Fiskars are eager to buy pause ads but are holding out until the IAB Tech Lab standardizes programmatic signals for streaming TV formats, expected later this month. Until then, most pause ads are bought through direct deals.
Walmart's Amazon-sized ads opportunity🔒 - Walmart's ad business hit $6.4 billion in fiscal 2026, growing 37% in Q1, faster than Amazon's ad growth rate of 24%.
Google must pay Klarna $2B in antitrust case - A Swedish court ordered Google to pay Klarna's price-comparison unit, PriceRunner, $1.97B after ruling the search giant favored its own shopping service in search results. Of course, Google plans to appeal.
That’s It For This Week 👋
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