Criteo boosts tech capabilities with $23 million AI lab

Criteo has invested US$23 million in an artificial intelligence (AI) lab to enhance its capabilities around machine learning for the advertising industry, with Suju Rajan, VP of Criteo in charge.

Based in Paris, the AI lab is a three-year project that will contribute towards the creation of industry standards for measurability and best practice, all of which will be available to the entire ecosystem in adtech and beyond.

According to Yvonne Chang, APAC executive managing director at Criteo, the AI lab launch is timely as the industry starts to appreciate the value of understanding relationships with shoppers and products.

"As APAC marketers seek data-driven solutions to better understand and connect with a large and ever-growing consumer base, recently announced policies on privacy, such as GDPR, further constrain and complicate the way data can be collected and stored," she said.

Chang said the lab would combine Criteo’s longstanding engineering expertise in machine learning with R&D in deep learning models to learn why such models work the way they do, understand their ability to draw conclusions, and test their fragility.

"We expect research from the Criteo AI Lab to improve the solutions our customers in APAC are already using, ensure the region’s data collection and usage practices conform to the highest ethical and privacy standards, as well as create capabilities that could lead to solutions we cannot even imagine yet," she said.

For APAC, Chang expects AI adoption for marketing will experience the highest compound annual growth rate between 2018 and 2025, adding that Criteo intends to work with partners and customers in the region to take predictive performance to the next level, by developing state-of-the-art solutions that meet their specific business needs.