As India’s e-commerce and quick commerce sectors race ahead, growing at a blistering 77% year-on-year, advertisers and retailers are in a sprint of their own: to monetise, measure, and manage a chaotic digital commerce ecosystem. At the centre of this emerging battleground is retail media, the fastest-growing segment of digital advertising globally, and companies like Criteo are quietly positioning themselves as indispensable infrastructure players.
“Unlike Western markets dominated by a few giants, India’s e-commerce is highly fragmented, with many retailers still operating in silos,” Medhavi Singh, Country Head, India at Criteo told financialexpress.com. “That fragmentation offers a rich pool of first-party data, but it also makes measurement and attribution extremely challenging.”
Criteo, a global adtech firm with a commerce media platform at its core, is betting big on India’s digital retail economy. Singh highlights that Indian consumers, “spoiled, in a good way”, are pushing both e-commerce and quick commerce players to innovate simultaneously. “What’s interesting is how these models are starting to converge. Quick commerce players are moving into Tier 2 cities, while traditional platforms are reducing delivery times.”
But monetising attention in a market as price-sensitive and regionally diverse as India isn’t straightforward. This is where retail media—ads shown within a shopping platform itself—offers a unique promise. According to GroupM, India’s retail media ad spend is projected to cross Rs 5,000 crore by 2025, more than doubling from 2023 levels.
The real bottleneck, however, isn’t demand, it’s infrastructure. While platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, and now Zomato have built their own ad stacks, thousands of mid-sized retailers lack the tools to capture ad dollars effectively. “We see ourselves as the connective tissue. Criteo’s value is in unifying these fragmented environments. Our dual role as both a DSP and SSP allows us to bring advertisers and retailers into a single, integrated system,” Singh noted.
This approach seems to be paying off. Globally, Criteo’s retail media contribution grew 25% in 2024, compared to a modest 8% rise in performance media. The company is already integrated with over 200 retailers worldwide and sees India as a critical growth frontier.
Yet, the challenges remain steep. One is technological disparity, many Indian retailers lack sophisticated measurement and attribution tools. Another is India’s sheer regional diversity, where consumer preferences shift dramatically every few kilometres. “You have to build for scale without sacrificing personalisation. Our AI systems, for example, can detect regional preferences, say, biryani in North India vs South Indian dishes, and adapt campaigns automatically, even at the sub-locality level,” Singh added
Criteo’s emphasis on AI-driven contextual intelligence aligns with global trends. McKinsey estimates that AI-powered retail media could add $1.3 trillion to global e-commerce by 2030. In India, the upside is even more dramatic given rising mobile penetration, standing at 1.2 billion wireless subscribers as of December 2023 (TRAI), and growing online consumption in Tier 2 and 3 cities.
As Indian giants build their own walled gardens, Criteo’s pitch hinges on openness and interoperability. “Retailers want control, and rightly so. But in the long run, what they also need is scale, precision, and integration, something that siloed platforms struggle to offer.” Criteo isn’t looking to dominate India’s retail media space, it’s aiming to streamline it. “Our real value lies in enabling a connected, end-to-end digital commerce ecosystem, not building another silo,” Singh concluded.