Here Comes The French Invasion: Bessemer Puts $7 Million Into Ad Retargeting Startup Criteo

In the online advertising world, one of the hottest trends right now is what is known as ad retargeting. The idea is simple. When you visit a retailer's or other advertiser's Website, it drops a cookie on your browser and the next time it sees you pop up on another site it loads an ad from that retailer. You've already expressed interest in that advertiser by visiting their site, so they retarget you whenever they can. It may sound a bit stalkerish, but trust me, e veryone is doing it . One startup in particular claims to do it better than anyone else, a French company called Criteo . CEO JB Rudelle says Criteo is the dominant retargeting ad network in Europe, and now he wants to dominate the U.S. He's already moved his corporate offices from Paris to Palo Alto, and now he just raised $7 million in a C round from Bessemer, which took the entire round. Bessemer partner Byron Deeter will join the board. The last time he raised money was from Index Ventures in 2008 . This last round brings his total capital raised to $24 million.