Criteo negotiating to acquire IPONWEB

Criteo, the commerce and media platform, has entered exclusive negotiations to acquire adtech company IPONWEB. The cost of the acquisition will be $380 million. The move is aimed at strengthening Criteo’s offering for the post-third-party cookie world.

Criteo offers audience-based advertising solutions across the open Internet by compliantly connecting first-party data across its network of brands and media. IPONWEB provides an enterprise media trading infrastructure for advertisers and publishers with DSP and SSP solutions.

“Criteo’s customers would benefit from enhanced full-funnel capabilities with even more flexible self-service tools, while continuing to leverage Criteo’s unique commerce data for targeting, measurement and superior outcomes,” said Criteo CEO Megan Clarken in a release.

Why we care. There will be more than one way to reach relevant audiences in the post-cookie world. Enhanced contextual advertising solutions may be one of them. But many brands (and publishers) are betting on first-party data. First-party data owned by any one brand can be limiting. Criteo is one player that allows clients to connect their first-party data (free of PII), thus increasing their reach. With this move, it’s looking to ad tools that help activate those audiences within Criteo.