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Conseil d'état upholds Criteo's €40M GDPR fine. / 13 March 2026 The French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) fined Criteo, a major online advertisement and tracking company in Europe, €40 million for violating the GDPR. This decision is based on complaints filed by noyb and Privacy International in December 2018. The CNIL found that the company failed to comply with data subject rights under the GDPR and could not prove that they obtained valid consent. The Conseil d'Etat rejected CRITEO's appeal and upheld the fine. Criteo - prominent ad-tech player. The French company Criteo provides "behavioral retargeting" services on thousands of websites. To do so, the company places tracking cookies on websites in order to analyze browsing habits and determines which products and services a user is likely to buy. The company has data on about 370 million people in Europe. Complaint led to further investigation. In December 2018, more than 7 years ago, noyb and Privacy International filed complaints against Criteo for not providing users with a proper option to withdraw consent. This complaint triggered an extensive investigation by the CNIL, the competent data protection authority for Criteo. The CNIL also broadened the scope to other areas and found additional infringements of the GDPR: among others the lack of transparency, failure to comply with the right to erasure and the right to access. Major blow to Criteo's business model. The French Data Protection Authority has concluded a deeper investigation into Criteo's business model. It revealed numerous violations of the GDPR. Since a very large number of people are concerned by those infringements and huge amounts of data are collected and processed, the CNIL decided on a substantial fine of 40 mio Euros. The decision was also approved by all other DPAs in Europe. Criteo appealed the decision with the Conseil d'Etat. In March 2026, the Conseil d'Etat rejected the appeal and confirmed the CNIL decision. This decision comes at a key moment in the debate surrounding the European Commission's legislative reform proposal called the "Digital Omnibus". The proposal includes a new definition of personal data, which would narrow the concept of what constitutes "personal" data, making it dependent on the subjective circumstances of the respective controller. This significant reduction of the GDPR's scope of application, which might be exploited by companies engaged in behavioral on-line tracking is widely critisised by experts and privacy advocates. In the case brought before the Conseil d'Etat, Criteo contested the classification of pseudonymous identifiers as personal data, which were attributed in connection with the IP addresses of data subjects and other browsing data. The company argued that it did not have all the information necessary to re-identify the data subject from the assigned identifier. The Conseil d'Etat disagreed, stating that data can only be considered anonymized if the risk of re-identification of a data subject is "insignificant, such identification being impracticable in practice." In the case of Criteo, considering that the purpose of the processing is to offer advertisements, a very large amount of information can be cross-referenced for a given identifier. In addition, Criteo itself confirmed that the identification of certain data subjects is not technically impossible. The Council of State therefore considered that these identifiers constituted personal data.

Criteo joins ChatGPT's ad pilot; Google patents gen AI landing pages. By AdExchanger Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026 - 12:01 am Can't Spell 'Mania' Without 'AI' Adexchanger all know that AI has hit escape velocity and, oh yeah, it's the future, etc., etc. But it's worth taking a step back to acknowledge and appreciate how much more dramatic this shift is than other digital media and marketing manias of the past. Take Criteo. While subscription software and mar tech stocks have been tanking recently, Criteo posted double-digit-percent growth over the past week. That's mostly thanks to news that OpenAI has integrated Criteo as the first ad tech partner for its nascent advertising pilot program for ChatGPT. Meanwhile, all it took was a Substack post last week to wipe out 12 digits in market value across tech and online ad platforms. What happened, exactly? Well, a market research firm called Citrini Research posted a thought experiment related to AI agents autonomously trading stocks - and everyone freaked out. It's just total craziness. And nowhere is it more extreme than at the very top of the AI market. Anthropic announced a $30 billion fundraising round a month ago, which, at the time, was the biggest investment round ever, including public IPOs, having surpassed the $27 billion or so raised by Saudi Arabian firm Aramco when it went public in 2019. Which now seems quaint, considering a few weeks later OpenAI raised $110 billion. Patently Bad For Traffic Google has a new patent - and it's more bad news for publisher traffic. But supporters like it for advertisers. The patent is called "AI-generated content page tailored to a specific user" - which describes exactly its intent. The idea is for Google to AI-generate a personalized landing page in response to a user's search. That dynamic page would show up in search results instead of a brand's own page. According to Search Engine Roundtable, the new page "might combine specific information from the organization's site with AI-generated summaries or layouts that highlight exactly what the user was searching for." Google would calculate a score for the current landing page based on how well it performs and meets user needs. It could generate a new one if the "existing page isn't a perfect match." In theory, these tailored landing pages will help convert customers at the bottom of the funnel. But, regardless, it's another blow for publishers. "If you thought AIOs angered people," Glen Gabe, president of SEO consultancy G-Squared Interactive, posted on X, "just wait for AI-generated landing pages from Google." AI ≠ Authorial Intent The US Supreme Court has decided not to hear a case about whether AI-generated content can be copyrighted, Reuters reports. The case, Thaler v. Perlmutter, was brought by plaintiff Stephen Thaler after the US Copyright Office rejected his federal copyright registration in 2022 for a visual image that he claims was generated by his own AI system in 2018. Most recently, the US Court of Appeals affirmed the Copyright Office's rejection in 2025 on the grounds that human authorship is required for copyright protection. (For more on this, see the infamous Naruto v. Slater "Monkey Selfie" case.) Now that the Supreme Court has declined to hear the case, the Court of Appeals decision stands - meaning that AI-generated content cannot legally be copyrighted, regardless of what the actual model was trained on. Obviously, this affects any marketers already using AI-generated visual assets, but it also should give pause to those who use AI at earlier points in the creative process. too. If you write a script for an ad and feed it into a video-generation product, the final result isn't protected, although your script might still be. But if you let AI do all the work? You've got no protection at all. But Wait! There's More! The agency holdcos have an AI story, but not an AI business model. [Digiday] Meta has a plan to chase more retail media spend. [Adweek] Hundreds of tech workers, including executives from Salesforce, OpenAI and IBM, signed an open letter urging the US Department of Defense (sorry, "Department of War") to withdraw its designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk. [doc] Here's how OpenAI caved to the Pentagon on AI surveillance to avoid similarly being designated as a supply-chain risk. [The Verge] Anthropic's refusal, meanwhile, has done wonders for its App Store ranking. [The Information] Can't blame this on AI, at least: Amazon Web Services suffered outages over the weekend after "unidentified objects" struck a data center in the United Arab Emirates. [Bloomberg] Investigating Clickout Media, a company that keeps buying up video game websites to fill with AI-generated casino and gambling content. [Aftermath] You're Hired! Paramount nabs two more ad sales leaders for its streaming business, including Amazon vet Danielle Carney as head of US sales for Paramount Advertising. [Business Insider] Tagged in:

Criteo has become the first advertising technology partner to integrate with OpenAI's advertising pilot in ChatGPT Free and Go versions in the United States. The integration enables brands to leverage Criteo's digital advertising platform within the AI chatbot. Criteo reported that users referred from large language model platforms like ChatGPT convert at approximately 1.5 times the rate of other referral channels, based on data from 500 US retailers in February 2026. The company activates over $4 billion in annual media spend and works with 17,000 advertisers globally. The integration will roll out in coming weeks as part of ChatGPT's ongoing advertising pilot. Criteo CEO Michael Komasinski said the partnership represents an opportunity to shape how advertising supports discovery within AI platforms whilst maintaining user trust.