Criteo / PUBLICITÉ WEB

Chiffre d'affaires
2010: 65,6 
2011: 143,6 
2012: 271,8

Résultat net2010: +4,7
2011: +6,1
2012: +0,8

French online advertising firm Criteo aims to raise up to $190 million in a listing in the United States in the coming weeks, testing investor appetite for technology start-ups ahead of bigger debuts such as social network Twitter.

The company, which uses tracking technology to target ads at consumers surfing the web, filed the preliminary prospectus for its initial public offering to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. (link.reuters.com/qax23v)

No details were given on how many American Depositary Shares Criteo aims to sell or their expected price on the Nasdaq. JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank Securities and Jefferies are the lead underwriters for the issue.

Criteo's move comes as investors pin their hopes that Twitter will reignite technology IPOs, dampened by Facebook's botched listing in May 2012.

There have been 118 IPOs in the United States this year, raising $27.9 billion, a 9 percent drop from the same period a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Criteo, which will trade under the symbol "CRTO", was founded in 2005 in Paris and became a darling in the online advertising sector by boosting the rate at which Internet surfers click on display advertising.

Criteo's technology focuses on "re-targeting" - catching users who have visited a shopping website without buying anything, and then showing the ads for similar items on other sites in order to tempt them back.

Criteo's customers, including travel website Expedia, computer maker Lenovo and retailer Macy's, pay the start-up only when a web surfer actually clicks on the marketing message they were shown.

It is one of a slew of companies - from Google to Facebook - that is benefiting as major advertisers shift spending from television and print outlets to the Internet.

Through 2015, two-thirds of the growth in total advertising expenditures will be from the Internet, according to forecaster Zenith Optimedia. Some 24 percent of global ad spend will be online by 2015, compared with 40 percent on TV and 22 percent in newspapers and magazines.

Criteo said proceeds from the IPO would be used for general corporate purposes, including sales and marketing, product development and the acquisition and development of technologies.