Retailers are becoming publishers with major ad sales and content businesses. But they’re in an uncommon position since they have too much advertiser demand without places for their ads to go.
Amazon is fourth and Walmart is number 20 on Comscore’s US site rankings. But most retail chains, even with a huge brick-and-mortar footprint, don’t have platform-level scale in terms of online traffic. There’s a high premium on retailer inventory, and retailers want to see if that continues as they add more inventory to their mix.
The Fresh Market, a specialty food retailer, launched a retail media network (RMN) through their site and email in 2020 as a way to keep vendor deals for end-cap aisle displays or promotions online when people weren’t shopping in-store during the pandemic ecommerce boom, said CMO Kevin Miller, who joined the company in May 2020.
Three years later, the company has a print magazine, a social and email marketing program and a new live-stream shopping program.
Demand was strong in 2020, Miller said, so the company created more direct email ad opportunities and also started bringing brands into Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and other social platforms.
Since then, The Fresh Market’s active email subscriber base has grown dramatically, now reaching almost 2 million accounts and 80 million emails per month. “But we didn’t want to clutter up our customers’ emails and social posts with too many ads,” he said.
The Fresh Market turned to offline media, launching a monthly 40-page glossy magazine that included recipes, holiday ideas and … ads!
Those ad placements came from the same budgets that would previously have gone to coupons or promos to move items off shelves, according to Miller. Now The Fresh Market sees this ad inventory as a way to move real-world inventory in nearby stores, since it’s used the placements to promote the store’s pre-made items.
The pivot to video (ads)
This week, The Fresh Market announced a video ad offering backed by Firework, a live-shopping tech company backed by AMEX. Firework provides live video tech and creates shoppable ad units within the stream, which is also simulcast to Facebook and Instacart, Miller said.
“I get about 20 to 25 solicitations per day with the latest tech or AI tool,” he said. “That’s probably the minimum for email, LinkedIn and phone.”
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But last year, when post-pandemic ecommerce numbers were flattening, Firework stood out as a way to capitalize on investments the company had already made in video content. Especially since the chain knew that its ecommerce power users – people who shop primarily online – were among the highest-income customers and were heavily influenced by on-site video.
The retailer has been doing videos on its site and YouTube for a while, Miller said, working with chef and TV personality Anna Rossi since 2020. And just like with the magazine, the retailer saw that particular items Rossi promoted during her streams – specific coffee beans, a brand of pumpkin ale, a pre-made gravy – would tick up for online orders in particular.
Now, with Firework, The Fresh Market will produce more of those livestreams and can monetize them more effectively. The new live video streams will allow for click-to-cart shopping and ad placements that charge on a CPM basis, Miller said.
Those videos had hundreds of thousands of viewers over the course of a 45-minute livestream, even before the company started working with Firework, he said. And over the course of two weeks, when it’s still made available on the site, “it gets numbers like a popular Netflix show.”
And if Netflix ratings are the new benchmark, retailers truly are becoming media companies.
