Criteo's retail media growth slowed to 10% in Q3. Why brands should care

Criteo, the ad tech company that runs retail media advertising for retailers around the world, reported third-quarter 2026 results on November 4, 2026. Its Retail Media revenue fell 23% year over year to $51.9 million, according to Criteo's results release.

Most of that drop comes from two clients whose scope with Criteo shrank, a change Criteo had already disclosed. The more useful number for a brand is the one underneath. Excluding those two clients, Retail Media Contribution ex-TAC grew 10% in Q3 2026. It grew 24% in Q1 2026 and 20% in Q2 2026.

So the part of retail media that sits beyond Amazon and Walmart is still growing, but growth has slowed by more than half in two quarters. If your plan for 2027 puts more money into second-tier networks on the assumption they're growing as fast as the headlines say, these numbers are worth a look first.

What Criteo reported on November 4, 2026#

Criteo's third quarter ended September 30, 2026. Company-wide revenue fell 11% to $416 million, Contribution ex-TAC fell 17% to $240 million, and net income fell 85% to $6 million. CFO Connor McGogney said the quarter's tax provision included a $6 million one-time tax impact associated with Criteo's redomiciliation. Contribution ex-TAC is the revenue Criteo keeps after paying traffic acquisition costs to the publishers and retailers whose inventory it sells.

Criteo reports two segments. Performance Media, its retargeting and commerce advertising business, is the larger one: revenue fell 9% to $364.6 million. Retail Media, the business that runs sponsored product and display ads on retailers' own sites and sells them to brands, is the one that matters here.

Retail Media revenue, Q3 2026

$51.9MRetail Media revenue, Q3 2026Down 23% from $67.1M in Q3 2025

Underlying Retail Media Contribution ex-TAC growth, Q3 2026

+10%Underlying Retail Media Contribution ex-TAC growth, Q3 2026Excluding two clients with reduced scope

Brands using Criteo Retail Media, Q3 2026

4,700Brands using Criteo Retail Media, Q3 2026Approximate, per Criteo

Criteo said the quarter carried "a $20 million headwind from previously communicated scope changes with two specific Retail Media clients." It doesn't name them, and we won't guess. On the earnings call, McGogney said Criteo expects full-year 2026 Retail Media Contribution ex-TAC to fall in the high teens to 20% at constant currency, including about $75 million from those two scope reductions. He also said the fourth quarter of 2026 had "a modestly slower start in October related to some retail media clients" and that some auction rollouts with larger retailers had been pushed into 2027.

How fast is retail media growing outside Amazon?#

In our view, Criteo's underlying number is a useful quarterly read on retail media beyond Amazon and Walmart, because Criteo sells inventory for a long list of retailers rather than one. On that read, growth is slowing quarter by quarter.

The reported numbers, before Criteo's adjustment, show the gap the two clients left.

Komasinski was upbeat about 2027 on the call. He said "four of our largest retail partners have recently renewed their agreements for multiple years" and described retail media as a channel "still growing in the high teens, depending on which study you are looking at." Criteo's own underlying growth came in below that in Q3.

Our read: the second tier is a test-and-prove budget#

We don't think one vendor's quarter tells you how every network is doing. Criteo's numbers mix many retailers across several countries, and the October slowdown McGogney described may be timing. But it lines up with what the larger forecasters already say. WARC expects global retail media growth outside Amazon to slow to 9.8% in 2027, the lowest rate it has recorded, and it cites Walrus Intelligence figures putting Amazon at about 78% of US retail media spend in 2025. Both figures are on our retail media statistics page with their sources.

For a brand, that argues for treating networks beyond Amazon, Walmart Connect and Instacart as budget that has to prove itself each quarter, not budget that grows on autopilot. Pick the retailers where your products actually sell, set an incrementality test before you scale, and cut the ones that can't show you closed-loop sales data.

Two other things in Criteo's quarter are worth noting.

More retail media is being sold by auction. Komasinski said auction-based display is "now live with more than 95 retailers, twice the number at the start of the year." An auction means prices move with demand instead of a rate card, which can work in your favor in quiet months and against you in Q4. It also means you need to understand how each auction is run. Our piece on the FTC's lawsuit over Amazon's ad auction covers what to check.

Sponsored products are moving into retailer AI assistants. Criteo said it's working to "bring sponsored products into AI-powered conversational search with THG Ingenuity." Amazon plans to let brands sponsor conversations inside Alexa for Shopping in the US from January 2027, which we cover in our breakdown of Amazon's new AI ad formats. If assistants on retailers' own sites carry ads, your product data has to be good enough for an assistant to recommend, on every retailer, not just Amazon.

We plan and run these networks alongside Amazon in our retail media advertising work, and how we set those budgets is the same discipline we describe in what a retail media audit should actually check.

What to do before 2027 planning closes#