Steckler will join the business on 4 May as its first managing director, nearly three months after leaving technology giant AOL. Criteo will be Steckler's first full-time job since he took voluntary redundancy from AOL as part of the company's global cutbacks.
Steckler will be responsible for handling the UK operation of Criteo, leading an 18-strong team. He will be expected to grow the team to 30 by the end of the year, working alongside commercial director Christian Penfold and director of business development Steve Dorey.
Pascal Gauthier, Criteo co-founder and chief operating officer, said: "We have been searching for a managing director for a long time, and Michael has the 360- degree experience of bringing the publisher and advertising side together. He's got the digital advertising knowledge that we need."
Steckler had been at AOL since July 2007, having joined as vice-president of interactive marketing and interim managing director before being appointed permanent managing director two months later, following the departure of Andy Jonesco, who left to join Sky.
Criteo was founded in 2005 and has offices in the UK, US, France, Italy and Germany. The business enables the retargeting of users who have left a client site with banner ads containing product specific information, generated automatically in real-time and targeted at individual users.
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