What is a retail media network?
A retail media network can best be described as your own private media ecosystem. This ecosystem consists of multiple channels that are offered by a retail company to other third-party brands. Channels that are very often included are websites, apps and email-lists. The last couple of months there is also a growing initiative in monetizing other less traditional assest such as in-store displays and customer data.
There are two types of brands that can purchase ad space on retail networks
- Endemic brands: brands who already sell products through your retail offering
- Non-endemic: brands that have no direct link to the products sold on your retail offering but are targeting the same audience segments.
Adding data segments also allows brands to connect with these audiences outside of the retailers channels by using their own media buying platforms. This helps advertisers to reach more relevant audiences in a more cost efficient way and by creating additional revenue streams for retail companies.
Why is retail media important?
Retail media will help brands advertise in places where customers are already in the right mindset of purchasing products on retail websites. Being exposed to a brand during your search is known to increase the likeness that consumers buy your products instead of those fo your competitors.
This is why retail media is best seen as an extension on more traditional in-store displays. It basically is a “digital shelf” where you can further increase brand and product exposure to your target audience.
Very often retailers will offer specific high-value placements such as homepage product carousels or checkout ad placements where customers typically add last-minute promotions to their shopping basket.
Because of the exposure rate of these high-value ad placements, they can be sold as premium inventory compared to classical productdetail page ad placements.
What is already in place?
The story always begins with making an inventory of all available channels that are currently in place. This means categorizing and evaluating your assets such as:
Website:
- What is your average monthly visitor count?
- How many pageviews happen per month and per page category (homepage, category, productdetail, checkout …)?
- …
Apps (if applicable):
- How many monthly active users do you have?
- What is there average browsing time?
- …
Social Channels;
- Which social channels are you actively using and managing?
- What are your follower counts?
- What is your current post frequency?
- …
Data:
- Are you gathering GDPR compliant that can be used for advertising purposes?
- Are all your email records double opt-in?
- …
Other Assets:
- Instore displays
- instore Audio
- …
what technology do you need for retail marketing?
The most important part of setting up a digital retail marketing strategy lies in the technology setup. If you want to run display ads on your own website/app, you typically would need something called an Ad Server.
This piece of technology is plugged into your website and/or app and allows you to define the ad placements where you will allow ads to appear. This requires a specific setup in order to be integrated properly, but it’s not rocket science if you do it well prepared.
If you also wish to offer access to programmatic media buyers, additional ad technology such as a Supply Side Platform or SSP is required.
Another important part that is often overlooked is a platform to store and handle your data. This needs to be done in a privacy-friendly manner which means no Personal Identifiable Information (PII) is shared with advertisers or brands whatsoever. The easiest way of doing this is by using a Data Cleanroom setup.
Don't know where to begin?
We can help you with the different steps of setting up a retail marketing strategy. Our services include:
- Audit of the current assets
- Audit and recommendation of the technology stack
- Creating the business case for retail media (est. costs vs est. revenue)
- Implementation of retail media technology