As the pandemic rages on, media agencies are helping clients navigate the shift to online shopping.
Measurement and analytics platform Profitero said on Wednesday that it’s partnering with Dentsu, IPG, MDC Partners and VaynerMedia, as well as the commerce divisions at Horizon Media and Publicis Groupe, to make its ecommerce data and measurement tools available for marketing use cases.
“Sales and marketing were managed separately in ecommerce, but now they’re blurring,” said Profitero CEO Bryan Wiener. “Every major retailer is now offering an ad platform.”
The partnership will help agencies access Profitero’s data, which tracks product sales, ROI, traffic, category market share and inventory availability, and to use that to optimize media campaigns running on retailer sites.
For example, if a brand can see that a certain product is high-converting but not getting a lot of traffic, that’s a signal to boost paid media spend against that product. Brands can also optimize their ecommerce creative based on product performance.
Historically, there hasn’t been an easy way for agencies to access product performance data because it usually sits in-house with the brand, Wiener said. But brands are starting to turn to agencies in order to optimize their ecommerce spend as retailers launch media networks and as commerce and media increasingly intersect.
“The rapid acceleration of ecommerce has outpaced brands’ ability to build the necessary teams, systems and processes to manage sales, marketing and supply chain,” Wiener said.
Wiener, an agency veteran and the former CEO of Dentsu’s 360i, knows that agencies don’t need to work through yet another platform. So Profitero has integrated with popular agency buying tools including Kenshoo, retail platform MikMak and search platform PacVue. This makes it easier for buyers to evaluate ecommerce data alongside their media buys.
“Enterprise clients have chosen their ad tech platforms,” Wiener said. “They don’t like being told they have to use a [different] platform for everything.”
Profitero will also train and support agencies using its platform as they build out their ecommerce expertise. The company puts agencies through a video-based certification program that teaches employees how to deploy the tool and run analytics against ecommerce data.
WPP commerce agency Geometry has integrated Profitero into its Living Commerce platform, which collates data from sources such as IRI, Nielsen and Wunderman Thompson, to help clients manage commerce strategies on and offline.
Profitero brings a more real-time view of how consumers are shopping online, said Beth Ann Kaminkow, Geometry’s global CEO.
“That helps clients harness insights for their businesses, so it’s not a lopsided balance between what the retailer knows and what the client can see,” she said.
Kaminkow likes that Profitero fits in easily with Geometry’s existing tech stack, thanks in part to the integrations with Kenshoo, MikMak and PacVue. Profitero plans to integrate with more DSPs and buying platforms going forward.
“The more people can take advantage of our analytics, the more valuable our platform is for our clients,” Wiener said.
