Criteo's 2022 Super Bowl campaign, produced by Believe Media and directed by Floria Sigismondi, made the brand's first-ever Big Game appearance arguing for an
ARCHIVECriteo Bets on the Open Internet With Its First Super Bowl Film
Criteo's 2022 Super Bowl campaign, produced by Believe Media and directed by Floria Sigismondi, is a film-format brand statement arguing that an open internet preserves consumer choice, diversity, and innovation, marking the company's first-ever appearance during the Big Game in the United States.
Published in February 2022, the campaign carries the full title "On the open internet, you choose the future" and centers on a simple but resonant idea: every decision an individual makes online leads to a distinct and consequential future. The film externalises that idea by following a female protagonist — played by actress Yinka Olorunnife in the character of AVA — as she navigates multiple dystopian and utopian versions of her own future, each representing a different possible trajectory for the internet itself. The campaign launched on Super Bowl Sunday, reaching one of the largest single-day television audiences in the United States, and was later distributed in an extended version across Criteo's digital and social channels.
The campaign's objective extends beyond brand awareness. Criteo uses the film to position itself as a principled actor in the ongoing industry debate over the future architecture of digital advertising — specifically the tension between a walled-garden internet, dominated by closed platforms, and an open web in which publishers, advertisers, and consumers retain greater autonomy. In 2021, Criteo had already signalled this strategic direction by introducing the tagline "The Future is Wide Open," according to criteo.com. The 2022 Super Bowl film translates that corporate stance into a broadly accessible consumer narrative, bringing a technical and commercial argument into the mainstream advertising moment of the year in the United States.
ARCHIVECriteo operates in a programmatic advertising market facing structural disruption. Google's announced removal of third-party cookies from Chrome placed every independent ad-tech company — Criteo prominently among them — under immediate commercial and reputational pressure in the United States and globally. As reported by AdExchanger on February 8, 2022, the campaign functions in part as a public defense of the open web at precisely the moment that defense is most commercially urgent for Criteo. AdExchanger noted that the average viewer would be unlikely to grasp the underlying industry stakes, raising questions about whether the message lands beyond the trade audience.
The programmatic advertising market provides the competitive backdrop. According to greenwichgp.com, global programmatic advertising was estimated at approximately one hundred billion dollars in 2022, up from eighty billion dollars in 2021, representing roughly twenty-five percent year-over-year growth. Within that market, Google Marketing Platform and Google Ads collectively held an estimated twenty to thirty percent of broad digital advertising, according to market data reported by linkedin.com and piano.io, while Amazon Advertising continued its rapid expansion as a closed retail media competitor. These walled-garden platforms represent the alternative internet the campaign implicitly warns against — one where consumer choice narrows and independent operators lose ground.
Criteo's strategic rationale for a Super Bowl placement is therefore dual. The brand needs to recruit publishers, retailers, and advertisers to its open-internet ecosystem, and it needs to do so in a moment when closed platforms appear to be winning. Reaching a mass United States audience on Super Bowl Sunday allowed Criteo to frame this industry argument as a universal human concern about autonomy and future possibility, rather than a niche advertising-technology dispute. Megan Clarken, CEO of Criteo, stated that the brand is "creating an open internet where you can choose what's best for you," as quoted by MediaPost on February 8, 2022.
Floria Sigismondi directed the campaign film for production company Believe Media. Sigismondi, whose career spans music videos, feature films, and high-profile advertising, brings a distinctly cinematic and speculative visual language to the work — a sensibility well-suited to a narrative that asks viewers to inhabit multiple possible futures simultaneously.
The creative team was led by Tiffany Appleton and Kirstin Roquemore, as confirmed by criteo.com. Megan Clarken, CEO of Criteo, explicitly noted the significance of this composition: the film was made by a female director, a women-led creative team, and features a Black female lead, aligning the production's own structure with Criteo's stated commitment to diversity, as reported by MediaPost on February 8, 2022. That alignment is not incidental — it reinforces the campaign's argument that an open internet is one where more voices, perspectives, and futures are possible.
Yinka Olorunnife plays AVA, the film's protagonist. AVA moves through alternate versions of her life, encountering both dystopian and utopian internet futures in a visual metaphor that Campaign Asia, writing on February 8, 2022, praised for its ambition while noting that the ad "raises more questions than it answers." That productive ambiguity is characteristic of Sigismondi's work: rather than resolving the tension between possible futures, the film holds them in parallel, placing the burden of choice — and the power of choice — with the viewer. The extended version distributed on Criteo's digital channels allows that narrative space to breathe beyond the compressed timeline of a Super Bowl slot, reaching audiences in the United States through YouTube and social platforms after the broadcast.
Criteo's 2022 Super Bowl campaign earned substantive trade press attention across multiple publications in the United States. Campaign Asia provided a generally positive review on February 8, 2022, praising the visual metaphor and quoting Criteo executive Brendan McCarthy on the brand's intent to empower consumer choice. AdExchanger's coverage on the same date took a more analytical and skeptical position, questioning whether the campaign's industry argument would register with a mainstream Super Bowl audience. AdNews Australia also covered the launch, widening the campaign's documented reach beyond domestic United States trade media.
No verified third-party consumer performance data — including reach figures, brand-lift metrics, or conversion results — is publicly available for this campaign. What is documented is the extended version's YouTube presence, where the film accumulated 28,480 views and 161 likes, as recorded in Criteo's own channel data. Those figures reflect the campaign's engagement in the extended digital window rather than its Super Bowl broadcast reach, which would have been substantially larger given the United States television audience for the game.
Structurally, the campaign performs a function that standard performance metrics do not fully capture: it positions Criteo as a named, visible participant in a public values debate at a moment when most of its competitors operate without broad consumer recognition. By associating the Criteo name with the concept of an open internet on the highest-visibility advertising stage in the United States, the brand builds the kind of salience that supports both B2B partnership conversations and longer-term advocacy. Clapboard scores the campaign 63 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition and strategic clarity alongside limited documented consumer impact and an argument whose full meaning remains inaccessible to general audiences.
Criteo's "On the open internet, you choose the future" campaign is a 2022 Super Bowl film produced by Believe Media. It follows protagonist AVA through multiple possible futures to argue that an open internet preserves consumer choice, diversity, and innovation. It marked Criteo's first-ever Super Bowl appearance in the United States.
Floria Sigismondi directed the Criteo Super Bowl film for production company Believe Media in 2022. The creative team was led by Tiffany Appleton and Kirstin Roquemore, with Yinka Olorunnife playing the lead character AVA. Criteo's CEO Megan Clarken highlighted the all-female creative leadership as reflecting the brand's diversity commitments, as reported by MediaPost.
Criteo advertised during the 2022 Super Bowl to bring its open internet argument to a mass United States audience. The campaign responded to pressure from Google's planned removal of third-party cookies from Chrome, using the highest-visibility advertising moment of the year to frame an industry debate as a universal question about consumer choice and future possibility.
The film follows AVA through dystopian and utopian versions of her future, each representing a different possible trajectory for the internet. The narrative argues that supporting an open internet preserves individual choice. Campaign Asia praised the visual metaphor while noting the ad raises more questions than it answers, as reported in its February 8, 2022 coverage.
Clapboard scores the Criteo "On the open internet, you choose the future" campaign 63 out of 100. The score reflects strong creative ambition from director Floria Sigismondi and strategic clarity around the open internet argument, balanced against limited publicly documented consumer performance data and an industry message that remains partially opaque to general audiences.
Criteo's primary competitors in programmatic advertising include Google Marketing Platform and Amazon Advertising. According to data reported by linkedin.com and piano.io, Google held an estimated twenty to thirty percent of broad digital advertising in the United States. Amazon Advertising expanded rapidly as a closed retail media alternative, representing the walled-garden internet model Criteo's 2022 campaign argues against.
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