Criteo welcomes French Competition Authority decision restoring partner status to Meta ad inventory

Criteo, the commerce media company, has welcomed the French Competition Authority's favorable decision to accept commitments offered by Meta (previously Facebook) to address the authority's competition complaint relating to Meta's termination of its ad-buying partnership with Criteo. As part of the accepted commitments, Criteo will be reinstated as an authorized partner, restoring the company's ad-buying capabilities on Facebook and now Instagram. Today's news follows a complaint initiated by Criteo in September 2019.

 

"We are very pleased with today's decision from the French Competition Authority to accept Meta's commitments. Positive outcomes such as this can ensure that large platforms like Meta operate with partners and the ecosystem with open and fair competition and without self-preferencing. We appreciate the continuing work and expertise in this case and in our industry by the French Competition Authority. Meta ultimately proposed strong commitments to address our complaint and we look forward to once again partnering with Meta to buy ad inventory on their platforms on behalf of our clients using our data and leading ad-buying optimisation technologies," commented Ryan Damon, Chief Legal Officer at Criteo. 

 

The objective of the original complaint was to recreate a level playing field for the industry by restoring Criteo and other companies' ability to access Meta's Facebook platform on fair terms and establishing clear and transparent guidelines to prevent the platform from unfairly favouring its own services on its platform at the expense of its competitors.

 

As the French Competition Authority stated in its own release available here, Meta has agreed to a series of commitments which apply to Criteo and any other similar harmed companies in France, among them: 

1. Re-establish Criteo's partner status and badge with Meta.

2. Re-offer the same bidding API to Criteo to enable the company to utilize its own buying optimization technologies and its own data to buy ad inventory across various Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram for Criteo's advertiser clients.

3. Use this bidding API to run ad campaigns on the platform globally.