An end-to-end campaign managed by an AI agent, connected to Criteo’s commerce intelligence platform
Paris, France – May 4, 2026 – Criteo (NASDAQ: CRTO), the global commerce intelligence platform, and dentsu France, announce the launch of the first video campaign fully orchestrated via Criteo’s Model Context Protocol (MCP). This activation marks a key milestone in the deployment of “agentic advertising,” where artificial intelligence agents directly manage media planning, activation, and optimization.
To bring this to life, a leading brand tasked dentsu with developing a video media plan focused on short formats with a dual objective: maximizing visibility and delivering tangible results. The agency activated the campaign through Criteo, optimizing for Completed Views to ensure the videos were genuinely watched and had a measurable impact on media performance.
Instead of setting up this campaign through the usual interfaces, the dentsu team used the dentsu.Connect platform’s trading agent as they would a colleague: in just a few sentences, they described objectives, budget, dates, video formats, brand constraints, and targeting. Connected to Criteo’s MCP, the agent then translated this brief into concrete actions across the Criteo ecosystem, from audience definition to campaign activation, with no need to log into the Criteo interface. The entire campaign was programmed fully self-service within a conversation thread backed by secure API calls.
With this campaign, dentsu becomes one of the first communication groups in the world to run a video campaign driven by an AI agent, in production and with real budget at stake. AI also becomes a shared innovation playground between Criteo and dentsu: Criteo provides the commerce intelligence — combining scaled commerce data and AI decisioning — and MCP infrastructure, while dentsu contributes its trading expertise and deep knowledge of its client’s brand.
Criteo MCP, Criteo’s new infrastructure for the AI era
Criteo MCP is Criteo’s agentic innovation layer, giving brands and agencies already using LLM assistants such as Claude direct access to Criteo’s platform, enabling them to create, manage, and monitor campaign performance in real time without leaving their AI environment. Instructions are given in natural language, while still allowing access to advanced settings whenever needed. As results come in, the agent can recommend budget, targeting, or creative adjustments based on Criteo’s commerce intelligence, powered by signals such as category demand, purchase patterns, SKU-level performance, and real purchase intent data. This significantly shortens the loop between insight and action. Behind the scenes, the Retail Media and Performance Marketing APIs handle campaign creation, audience building, ad serving, and ongoing optimization.
Time and efficiency gains to refocus on strategy
This first activation illustrates a profound shift in how teams work: a few natural-language exchanges are now enough to scope and launch a full video campaign, while still allowing traders to retain control over key trade-offs.
For dentsu, this streamlined approach enhances the overall effectiveness of its initiatives and allows the company to focus its efforts where they generate the most value for clients: strategic advice to the advertiser, performance analysis, and building sustainable results for brands.
“For our teams, being able to launch and manage a Criteo campaign simply by conversing with an AI agent is a game changer. We move faster, standardize our workflows across platforms, and we can devote more time to strategy in service of our clients. This first end-to-end MCP campaign with Criteo is part of our ambition to be at the forefront of agentic media buying within dentsu,” adds Clémence Bougerol from dentsu.
These capabilities lay the foundation for cross-channel orchestration with commerce intelligence at its core, addressing immediate operational needs while paving the way toward a more intelligent, outcome-driven model of media activation.
“With this campaign orchestrated with dentsu via MCP, we’re moving from AI as an optimizer to AI as an orchestrator of the full media workflow. By investing early in MCP, we are reinforcing our ambition to make Criteo the commerce intelligence and infrastructure layer that connects AI agents to our clients’ business outcomes,” explains Grégoire Bruni, Director, Global Agency at Criteo.
Contacts
Criteo Public Relations
Jessica Meyers, j.meyers@criteo.com
Criteo Investor Relations
Melanie Dambre, m.dambre@criteo.com
About Criteo
Criteo (NASDAQ: CRTO) is the global commerce intelligence platform that drives performance for brands, agencies, retailers, and publishers. Built on proprietary commerce data from more than $1 trillion in annual sales and two decades of AI innovation, Criteo helps companies across the ecosystem make smarter decisions and achieve better outcomes, while delivering more relevant experiences for shoppers. With thousands of clients and deep partnerships across global retail and digital commerce, Criteo provides the technology and insights businesses need to compete and grow. For more information, please visit criteo.com.
Forward Looking Statements Disclosure
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including our expectations regarding our market opportunity and future growth prospects and other statements that are not historical facts and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: failure related to our technology and our ability to innovate and respond to changes in technology, uncertainty regarding our ability to access a consistent supply of internet display advertising inventory and expand access to such inventory, disruption of current plans and operations by our planned transfer of the company's legal domicile from France to Luxembourg via a cross-border conversion (the "Conversion"), failure to satisfy any of the conditions to and complete the Conversion, investments in new business opportunities and the timing of these investments, whether the projected benefits of acquisitions or strategic transactions, including the Conversion, materialize as expected, uncertainty regarding international operations and expansion, including related to changes in a specific country’s or region’s political or economic conditions (such as changes in or new tariffs), the impact of competition or client in-housing, uncertainty regarding legislative, regulatory or self-regulatory developments regarding data privacy matters and the impact of efforts by other participants in our industry to comply therewith, the impact of consumer resistance to the collection and sharing of data, our ability to access data through third parties, failure to enhance our brand cost-effectively, recent growth rates not being indicative of future growth, client flexibility to increase or decrease spend, our ability to manage growth, potential fluctuations in operating results, our ability to grow our base of clients, and the financial impact of maximizing Contribution ex-TAC, as well as risks related to future opportunities and plans, including the uncertainty of expected future financial performance and results, changes in general political, economic and competitive conditions and specific market conditions; adverse changes to the marketing industry, changes in applicable laws or accounting practices, and those risks detailed from time-to-time under the caption “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in the Company’s SEC filings and reports, including the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 26, 2026, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and in the proxy statement/prospectus filed with the SEC under Rule 424(b)(3) on January 22, 2026 in connection with the Conversion, as well as future filings and reports by the Company. Importantly, at this time, macro-economic conditions including inflation and fluctuating interest rates in the U.S. have impacted and may continue to impact Criteo’s business, financial condition, cash flow and results of operations. Accordingly, a forward-looking statement is neither a prediction nor a guarantee of future events or circumstances and those future events or circumstances may not occur. You should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release.
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