With media companies looking for higher revenues online & the entire Internet essentially powered by advertisements, the opportunity to provide more accurate, higher-value, or just ‘smarter’ ads is still wide open. Whether it be pre-targeting or re-targeting, pre-roll or post-roll, display ads or text ads, the opportunities for monetization on sites are multiplying each day, and startups who are making this possible – or just convincing websites to get off of Google Ads – are as abundant as they are profitable.
Now that Paris-based Criteo has gone public, Venture Capitalists are certainly on the look out for, well, the next Criteo; they won’t have to look far beyond the péripherique in Paris to find potential candidates. Paris has managed to line up quite a few assets inside the City of Light that will make for a beautiful melting pot of potential AdTech disruptors.
Publicis-Omnicom: the center of the advertising world is now Paris
We wrote earlier this year about how the world’s #2 and #3 advertising agencies – Publicis & Omnicom – announced a merger that would put the co-headquarters in New York & Paris. While this may seem like a ‘shared’ merger, sources close to the two companies know that the French Publicis had been growing much faster than Omnicom, largely due to its success in digital. With the center of the advertising world based in Paris, French startups are just down the road from arguably one of the largest clients in the advertising world.
Criteo is now public – the knowledge, experience & money are all in Paris
Now that Criteo is a publicly traded company, you can expect that some of the money French VCs, founders, and employees earned from the IPO will be going straight into the next generation of AdTech companies. In addition, Criteo has been on somewhat of an acquisition streak these past few months – gearing up for the IPO, no doubt – and we can expect that some of the many AdTech startups will be acquired by Criteo in an effort to continue to innovate.
AdTech & Big Data: smarting number-crunching from former Exalead employees
As we noted last month, France has a bit of a Big Data mafia springing up right now. If not evident enough by events like Datajob, a Big Data recruitment event, the dozens of big data startups that have sprung out of ex-search giant Exalead may be a better indicator of how the number of Big Data startups will explode in Paris in the coming years. Whether it’s pre-, re-, or post-targeting, adtech is powered by big data, and Paris has got the needed search expertise to create innovative solutions for AdTech startups.
Brands, brands, brands: advertisers are already chomping at the Parisian bit
It’s Paris. Need I say more? Whether it’s fashion, luxury, automotive, cinema, entertainment or otherwise, brands come to Paris.
We’ve already got the AdTech startups!
Criteo hasn’t been a one-off success in an isolated ecosystem – far from it, it’s been surrounded by venture-backed players. AlephD just announced a €1.5 Million fundraising from ParTech et al. today, and Ezakus has raised nearly €5 Million already. Video Ad startups eBuzzing, Teads, and StickyAdsTV are picking up steam in 2013, and there’s much more to be done in this space!