To me, this is more far reaching than FB stock will ever be. I’m in.
I 'm really bullish on CRTO but wouldn’t say they are more far reaching than Facebook. Facebook is fundamentally changing how people spend time on the Web. It’s a platform with over 1 billion people on it. I can see Facebook growing to over 2 billion in the next 5 to 7 years. The implications of a platform with so many people on it is simply immense. Their goal of providing Internet to those who don’t have it today is aligned with the idea of creating a connected world experience and essentially boils down to making Facebook the default entrance to the online world. So, I really think Facebook has immense opportunity in from of it and it could do things we can’t even imagine.
CRTO is a very good company, operating in the niche of ‘re-marketing’. I think they have a good business model and they are benefiting from some network effects (i.e., as more businesses use them for ads they get more inventory to manage which allows them better deals with the sites which hosts the ads). I think they have good data science being driven by solid engineering and business execution. But, CRTO is more likely to be disrupted or taken over by someone than Facebook, and in some sense I feel that Facebook can be a great compounding engine for many years to come; I 'm less certain of CRTO as the ad market is in constant flux and CRTO is competing with behemoths such as Google in this space.
All said, I do think CRTO offers excellent risk/reward tradeoffs and I hold an average sized position in my portfolio.
Anirban