IOS9 ad blockers bad news for CRTO

mauser96: True not many people use Safari…

You may want to re-think your definition of “not many” because Apple’s Safari browser accounted for over half of US mobile and tablet internet usage in March according to independent website analytics provider, StatCounter.

http://gs.statcounter.com/press/safari-over-half-us-mobile-a…

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but not on computers where I do most of my searching. Safari has under 4% share
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpr…
this saying Safari is down to less than 40% on mobile

your link is US only

overall ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
less than 14%
How many use Safari worldwide ?
Not Many

But I am one of the ones who do.
14%% , 39% ,whatever, I doubt if ad blocking will make much impact.

http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-of-Internet-user…

Linux users have a staggering 29.04% blocking rate, compared with 12.95% for Mac users, and 9.25% for Windows users.
• Mobile blocking is gaining popularity: Android shows a 2.24% blocking rate, and iOS 1.33%
ad blockers are in the minority at this time

I had no idea Chrome was so popular And even on mobile Safari is steadily losing share to Chrome

I think I will give Chrome a try.

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I dislike ads which is why I use Netflix. But ads are ubiquitous, you can’t get past them on a DVD, they are even there when you go to a movie.
Great. Which means the final frontier is embedded product placement content within the movie/published material itself. Expect ever more oral and visual product placements like Macallan, Gordon’s, Omega, Ford etc in the next Bond film for starters.
How tedious.
Ant

mauser96: but not on computers where I do most of my searching…

Laptop screens and desktop monitors have a lot of real estate. While banner, skyscraper and other ads are not especially invasive on bigger screens, they’re annoying on a small screen. The perceived threat to CRTO is in the iPhone and iPad user market, not within the traditional computer marketplace.

mauser96: …this saying Safari is down to less than 40% on mobile…

Potential ad blocking on about 40% (and other sources report up to 50%) of mobile browsers is what’s causing concern among investors. The concern may be overblown or ad blocking may never materialize but my point is this: some posters here have written that since they don’t use an ad blocker on their own home computers, what’s the big deal? The big deal is ad blockers on mobile devices, first because Apple Safari is on a considerable percentage of mobile browsers; and second, because a younger (and more desirable) target market is more likely to browse with a mobile device than with a traditional computer.

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There is a type of advertising that intentionally is annoying, remembering a brand or product may be all that is needed
But most advertisers will realize that for addition be effective they need to attract attention without annoying the viewer.

I don’t take somebody’s guess about" potential " too seriously . It’s the future, they don’t know. I take today’s numbers more seriously since they ate closer to factual.
In any case the only reason I care one way or another is whether it is likely to hurt CRTO revenue and earnings over the next 12 to 18 months. The “market” doesn’t think much further ahead than that

My guess is NO . Even if it turns out to be YES the stock price drop has probably more than adjusted for it. I don’t understand Criteo well enough to have a lot of conviction in holding, but news like this isn’t enough to be a sell trigger for me.
The news probably was a catalyst for early holders to take profits. There seems to be no good headline news to balance it out. We will have to wait for earnings. Hopefully they will be good… Meanwhile it looks as if those who sold quickly might have been smarter. Whether that will be the case in a year is unknown.

I wonder if a" younger more desirable " market exists because young people are more into fads and more easily manipulated. Because I know my buying power is a lot more now than it was when I was 20 years old.

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Happy Fooliversary, mauser! 16 years!

Neil

Thanks… I didn’t even notice the balloons

Motley Fool boards are the best I have found.

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So this board has been quite helpful. Has put a lot of my fears to rest on how this will affect CRTO, e.g. can’t develop apps to stop in-app advertising.

At the same time, there are a few things still on my mind

1 - Is CRTO competing directly with the like of FB, GOOG, and AMZN? I thought they partnered with these players. These are big and bad players in the tech space to be competing with.

2 - So let’s assume, per Neil’s comment, that they’ve already “figured out” how to offer advertising solutions despite the prevalency of ad-blocking software. Now they need to do the same in mobile. If they are competing with the likes of FB, GOOG, etc. then this could be a tall task. Add on top of that, that those guys have arguably already figured out mobile, thus making competition tougher for CRTO here.

3 - I’ll add that I don’t think this instilled any profit-taking, just cuz the stock has had a tendency to be quite range-bound and volatility, per the chart.

4 - SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT - The Motley Fool Stock Advisor service does a pretty good job describing what CRTO does.

5 - Can we say for certain that AAPL is not pushing this ad-blocker or will not in the future? Seems some of their big competitors like GOOG really rely on ads…and thus this move could be a direct move against GOOG and unfortunately CRTO is caught in the cross-fire

Always would love to hear more. Feeling better, but still cautious.

Dom

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Just as an aside, I’d suspect CRTO has been down a little the past few days because of the Apple announcement, but ALSO because of all the upset over the Greek possible exit from the eurozone and what effect that would have on the euro, and resultant pullback of european markets. Just a guess on my part.

Saul

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True, the stock has seemed to have quite a tendency to be range-bound, just looking at the 1-year chart.

One thing I wonder is, does the strong US dollar/weak Euro have a bullish or bearish affect on CRTO? My guess is it’s bullish, assuming they get a sizeable chunk of revenue from US firms, which then translates to higher profits in Euros…just a guess…

I’de add that the “smart money” seems to be really bullish on Europe over the US, fwiw. Perhaps that will blow up in the hedge funds’ faces, but it definitely appears that a lot of those folks are parking their cash in overseas firms…perhaps also cuz of the strong US dollar.

Time will tell

Dom