They say comparison is the thief of joy, but in commerce, accurate comparisons can bring peace of mind.
MikMak rolled out an “apples-to-apples comparison” tool across social, search, programmatic, streaming video and retail media Wednesday, dubbed MikMak Commerce for Retail Media. The platform upgrade ramps up its ecommerce and analytics offerings, according to CEO and founder Rachel Tipograph.
MikMak can track which platform or retailer people are checking out from with their purchases and holds a patent on its ability to observe “Add to Cart” sessions in media. It was already integrated with most major media channels. Now it integrates with retail media, too.
“Anyone who’s in media has to get into retail media,” Tipograph said, because it’s “the fastest-growing part of brand advertisers’ investments.”
But retail media’s explosive growth comes with growing pains. Her customers expressed frustrations in three areas: whether retail media drove incrementality for their business, the lack of consistent measurement standards and the need for third-party verification of retail media reporting.
Plus, brands struggled to reconcile all the disparate data coming in from multiple retail media partners. The metrics were all over the place, and the reporting came back in different time frames.
Since the majority of retail media groups operate as managed service businesses, they often charge a hefty fee for retail media analytics reporting. It could take six months to wrangle the reporting, according to Tipograph.
“Six months is too late,” she said. “The way to win is to have data in real time to make real-time optimizations.”
To solve to these problems, MikMak is “aggregating the measurement side,” she said. She noted that this same aggregation phenomenon is also playing out on the supply side with The Trade Desk, as it aggregates retail media supply.
A few customers have tried MikMak 3.0 betas, including Colgate-Palmolive, which has been testing it since March. Colgate has dozens of brands with hundreds of stock-keeping units (SKUs), which track its inventory, according to Tipograph. MikMak 3.0 scanned Colgate’s real-time online and offline inventory to show customers where they could buy the product.
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But MikMak wants its product to be accessible to more than just large enterprises. Brands of any size can use its self-service product, a move that Tipograph expects will bring in both challenger brands and incumbents.
In addition to making it easier for companies to measure across retail media, MikMak 3.0 is making part of its technology consumer facing.
When customers visit a brand’s website, like Nivea, part of German skin care company Beiersdorf, MikMak can pull in where Nivea products are available. Customers can then immediately purchase products through their preferred location.
MikMak’s backend offers users a look at their entire product catalog, which can be activated across any brand site or media channel, Tipograph said.
MikMak is also working on making its platform global. In the last 18 months, the company saw more global RFPs come in for its technology.
In February, MikMak acquired Paris-based shopper monetization platform and point-of-purchase software provider Swaven, which serves the EMEA, LATAM and APAC markets. The acquisition propelled MikMak’s expansion beyond North America to its current position, where it has more than 3,000 retailers across 80 countries.
