As the advertising landscape evolves, retail media has emerged as a powerful beast that marketers must harness. ANA’s recent Retail Media Networks Fair brought together advertisers, retail media networks, a Wall Street advisor and measurement experts to discuss today’s hottest medium.
The main takeaway? There is an urgent need for brands to adapt and thrive in this dynamic environment.
From insights gleaned by these industry leaders, the following is a list of essential tips to help advertisers optimize their retail media investments and ensure they’re not just surviving but thriving in this fierce new arena.
1. Foster a symbiotic relationship: Allow for a true partnership to exist with retail media. Advertisers should listen to their retail partners while also sharing their own challenges with them. The more a retail media network (RMN) can engage advertisers and understand key drivers of success, the better the results will be for both.
For example, is retail media being employed simply for conversation, or are upper-funnel metrics such as awareness and consideration also objectives? Advertisers should share those specific objectives with retail media partners. For conversion, advertising across retailer assets may make the most sense; for brand building, off-site display, video and social might work best.
2. Customer-centricity is nonnegotiable: Always put the customer at the center of any activation. The value of lasting relationships, trust and loyalty cannot be counted in likes or impressions. The medium should never overtake the message. Too often we get caught up in awe of the technology and risk losing authentic communication with the consumers.
3. Empathize with the customer journey: Think through the lens of the customer. What is their specific shopping-trip goal? What are they looking to accomplish? For instance, immediate consumption is very different from a pantry load. Different retailers play different roles in the customer journey.
Meanwhile, customers have different shopping experiences across different types of retailers, and advertisers need to tailor their messaging accordingly. An offer from a beverage brand in a discount grocery store might focus on a bulk buy with value pricing, while in a convenience store the messaging could be about immediate gratification.
4. Maximize touch points: Ensure your customers encounter your brand across all the places they spend time, including on-site platforms, off-site media and in-store locations. Geo-targeting, with messages sent directly to shoppers’ mobile devices, can be especially effective for engaging in-store customers at key moments. To gain deeper insights, analyze data from these various touch points to understand customer behavior patterns, which can help tailor messages across channels and optimize each part of the campaign for stronger results.
5. Use RMNs’ consultative approaches: Leading retail media networks are taking a consultative approach. They have become adept at bringing the right stakeholders to the table. They can help a marketer develop an annualized view of a shared plan across the organization to make sure each brand aligns marketing, merchandising, advertising and media efforts with KPIs.
6. Attract new customers: Forget that old perception that retail media is just about retargeting and reaching loyal buyers. Retail media can introduce brands to new customers by providing insights that are particularly helpful for building lookalike audiences. When advertisers understand the demographic characteristics of customers who interact with their messaging, they can then use that information to target new customers who look similar.
7. Evolve from demographic data to purchase data: Purchase data from retail media is significantly more efficient at predicting consumer lifestyles and interests than demographics. You are what you buy. Demographics can be an old and outdated way to think about reaching audiences. Tap into retail media for data that enables better targeting.
8. Insights over data: Everything retail media does is grounded in insights. Rather than just giving advertisers an audience, RMNs provide insights that can help drive business and marketing plans. Data is no longer a differentiator; access to insights is the differentiator. To deliver the best results for a campaign, start with customer insights. RMNs understand shopper behavior. Insights gleaned from first-party data connect behavior and transactions to performance.
9. Standardize metrics for better comparisons: To optimize investment, advertisers need to be able to make apples-to-apples comparisons between RMNs. That could potentially lead to greater spending for the overall category, with a rising tide lifting all boats. The ANA and Media Ratings Council support the reporting of common baseline metrics by RMNs, including impressions, viewable impressions, clicks and click-through rate (CTR), each filtered for IVT (invalid traffic).
10. Explore commerce media: Retail media consists of companies who have an online and/or brick and mortar retail presence – consider Amazon, Walmart, Target and Kroger.
But there is also commerce media that closes the loop between media impressions and commerce transactions to improve targeting, provide new audience insights and deliver relevant experiences for consumers. Commerce media generally consists of nonretailers who use the data from their respective loyalty program memberships to offer targeted solutions to advertisers. Kinective Media by United Airlines and Chase Media Solutions are examples of commerce media networks.
11. Cultivate a “curiosity mindset”: Allocate a portion of your fiscal year budget for testing and learning. Listen to corporate earning calls and attend conferences. Be on the watch for new opportunities, and lean in.
12. Demand timely reporting: Fight for faster reporting of results from RMNs. Some networks promise reporting two months after the close of a campaign, but advertisers often have to wait up to five months. That timing makes it difficult to learn and pivot. To get incremental investment for retail media, advertisers need those results in hand sooner.
Retail media is not just another channel; it’s a transformative force reshaping how brands connect with consumers. The tips shared here aren’t merely suggestions; they’re calls to action for advertisers ready to break free from convention and redefine their strategies. Will you seize the opportunity to harness the potential of retail media? The time for bold moves is now.
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