Albertsons has unleashed shopper data from its network of 2,300 stores to help CPG advertisers determine whether their digital ad spend drove sales.
When the grocery chain, whose numerous brands include Safeway, launched Albertsons Performance Media last week, it joined retailers like Target, Kroger and Walmart, which have each invested in building an audience activation platform.
Albertsons’ media platform spans all brands in the company’s network.
“Advertisers want to know if their digital ad spend is reaching the right people and there’s not always as much transparency there as there should be,” said Narayan Iyengar, SVP of digital and ecommerce for Albertsons.
“In the grocery industry, where such a large proportion of purchases are offline, it becomes that much harder to tie an ecommerce ad to an offline purchase,” he added.
Albertsons’ Performance Media platform is powered by Quotient, a shopper marketing technology company that owns Coupons.com.
Quotient fields the team that services Albertsons Performance Media and provides ad delivery, analytics and measurement services.
It will also manage media activation for Albertsons via its own publisher network and exchange, the Quotient Media Exchange.
Albertsons’ in-house team also markets the platform to CPGs.
While Quotient historically powered Albertsons’ data-driven digital offers and personalized coupons, it recently expanded to paid media.
“We can take their data and use our media technology to reach shoppers anywhere on Albertsons’ properties or across Quotient’s network of publisher properties, Facebook or contextual places like recipe sites,” said Mir Aamir, president and CEO of Quotient.
But Albertsons Performance Media has more scale and support for unique ad formats, compared to similar offerings from Target, Walmart and Kroger, Iyengar said.
Albertsons claims to have a large cookie pool and proprietary data from 30 million verified buyers, which enables sales attribution.
And Quotient can marry media activation with personalized creative, thanks to its 2017 acquisition of media platform Crisp Mobile, used by CPGs to combine brand messaging with a retail call to action.
“Our data helps CPGs target specific deals to specific customers, and Quotient takes the ad and embeds immersive creative with a specific call to action,” Iyengar said.
That capability in particular is important as brand manufacturers like P&G continue to slash their marketing costs, Aamir said.
About 60 CPG brands and manufacturers have tested Performance Media so far.
“You have so many CPGs who are cutting marketing spend to be more efficient,” Aamir said. “These interactive ads, which are mostly mobile, [are one] way to bring together shopper marketing dollars with brand media dollars by [embedding] a brand message with a call to action through one touch.”
