Retail Media

Three years after launching a retail media network, specialty food retailer The Fresh Market has a print magazine and a new live-stream shopping program.

Retail media may still be a nascent industry, but it is quickly becoming integral to retailers’ advertising strategies. And, as traditional advertisers like Sainsbury’s or Tesco join the retail media space, there are issues and questions the market must urgently address.

Arete Research’s Richard Kramer and Rocco Strauss predicted a reckoning in the year ahead for companies that depend on digital ad revenue, which they expect to decline by 5% to as much as 10% in 2023, thanks to “demand destruction.”

Microsoft Advertising is getting more serious about retail media. On Tuesday, Microsoft Advertising launched an off-site audience extension product and kicked off a testing phase for in-store activations.

Goodway Group has chosen Jay Friedman as CEO. Friedman assumes the chief executive position after more than 16 years at the company, most recently as president. Former CEO David Wolk moves into the role of executive chairman.

In the face of persistent economic uncertainty, marketers are simultaneously hustling to satisfy quickly changing consumer appetites and striving to squeeze the value out of every last marketing dollar. Not to mention needing to adopt full-funnel marketing approaches and allocate spend to channels as flexibly as possible.

In 2022, retail media grew to include practically any business with a first-party identity graph, purchase data and a claim to ears or eyeballs. Despite the buzz, however, retail media has a long way to go before the category is mature.

The slow dismantling of cookie-based tech had its fingerprints all over our coverage in 2022 (if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor). Data privacy supplied the drumbeat, from stories about clean rooms to new privacy-forward ad tech products to the rise of retail media (a data safe haven).

When online grocery subscription service Misfits Market was founded in 2018, it took a page right out of the DTC advertiser’s playbook, says Holly Eagleson, VP of marketing. But since the release of Apple’s ATT, Misfits has been embracing new channels.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Mind The Store More brick-and-mortar retailers, especially department stores with real acreage, are carving out square footage in their stores for hybrid ecommerce fulfillment.  The idea isn’t new. Best Buy, Nordstrom and others have used stores as online shipping hubs for years. But the […]

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How should advertisers approach a wild-child platform like Twitter? David Cohen, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau – who recently spoke with Elon Musk himself on that very topic – weighs in. Also in this episode: grappling with the term “commercial surveillance,” retail media real talk and marketing in the metaverse.

Walmart and Target each had a similar warning for investors when they reported earnings this week. The two major US retailers expect a modest Q4 and spoke of early signs that consumers are dramatically changing their shopping patterns (yet again).

The ad tech hits keep coming this earnings season. The latest is Criteo, which reported total revenue of $446.9 million in Q3 2022, down from $508.6 million last year, while net profit in Q3 dropped from $24.2 million in 2021 to $6.5 million.

The Amazon Marketing Cloud, which emerged from beta last year, is at the beating heart of Amazon’s advertising ambitions. Amazon touted the product, which is its answer to a homegrown data clean room, at its Amazon Ads unBoxed conference in New York City on Wednesday.

AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Social Butterflies Are we entering an era of celebrity-owned social media? That’s the question posed by The Atlantic in light of Kanye West’s recent purchase of Truth Social, a conservative social platform, and Elon Musk’s will-they-won’t-they Twitter drama.  Immediate fears are overblown. Truth Social’s user base […]

What do Marriott, Lyft and Lowe’s have in common? All three are non-advertising companies that recently launched their own media platforms. Lowe’s rolled out its One Roof Media Network in October 2021; Marriott announced its travel media network in May; Lyft Media launched in August. Both Marriott and Lowe’s use Yahoo’s ad tech to support […]

Uber formally organized a new segment of the business called Uber Advertising on Wednesday. Uber also introduced a new ad offering called “journey ads” that allow brands to target Uber riders based on their destination.

Getting cozy with agencies wasn’t always a priority for Criteo, which has direct relationships with more than 20,000 clients. But now that Criteo has commerce and retail media aspirations, it needs to strike agency partnerships, says its CRO Brian Gleason.

Now that on-demand delivery service Gopuff has an ad platform business, it’s become an unlikely springboard to help creators promote and distribute their brand ventures.

Bill Michels knows programmatic data. For the past couple years, he’s led The Trade Desk’s entire product group. Now, he’s headed to Moloco, where he’s starting as general manager of the company’s retail media business unit.

“We realized that there was a whole universe of travel consumer that was applicable to a number of non-endemic categories as well,” said Adam Ochman, TripAdvisor’s global head of brand head of marketing solutions and co-leader of the new Wanderlab in-house creative studio.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Drizl Before The Storm New retail media players raise difficult questions about particular use cases.  The latest platform, for instance, is Drizly Ads, launched by the Uber-owned alcohol delivery company. On the one hand, booze brands need to find online customers. Targeting […]

Jeff Clark began at Walmart in 2017, before Walmart Connect was Walmart Connect, and before even Walmart Media Group prior to that. But whatever you call it, Walmart is homing in on a major opportunity in the booming retail media category. Clark, who’s now Walmart Connect VP of product, product marketing and analytics, is focused […]

Walmart Connect has gotten a lot more Connect-y of late. Now the retail media platform is striking partnerships to measure social commerce on TikTok and Snap, CTV ads on Roku and live-shopping content with companies Firework and TalkShopLive. The Walmart ad business has had bursts of new partners since it settled on The Trade Desk […]

Merkle’s retail and consumer goods group has become a testbed for multiple other verticals. Although people tend to think of retail advertising from the perspective of grocery store chains and major CPG brands (Walmart, Target, Kroger and the brands they carry), these days the “retail media” category includes a host of new entrant: Best Buy, Marriott, Lyft, Uber, craft goods store Michael’s.

Kroger Precision Marketing, the grocer’s advertising and data business, announced an expansion into CTV and video inventory channels. “It’s critical to … move into these channels that are increasing with respect to where advertisers are investing their dollars,” Kroger SVP Cara Pratt told AdExchanger.

Smartify Media launched in 2020 as a digital out-of-home platform to allow small businesses in Boston to share real-time updates with customers during the pandemic. Now, the company is trying to create a retail media network with small businesses nationwide, like bodegas and other mom-and-pop shops, through its Small Business Revenue+ program.

In the past few weeks, a litany of the biggest US food, beverage and consumer goods brands, among them many of the world’s biggest advertisers, disclosed tepid quarterly revenue and lower year-over-year sales, which were more than offset by price increases so the overall revenue was up. And their investors are anxious to see durable profits and stronger relationships with retailers at a time when brand-to-retail relationships have become more complicated.

The 2022 Inc. 5000 list was published on Tuesday, and although its purpose is mostly for marketing (companies pay for inclusion, after all), it is a useful benchmark for tracking the startup ecosystem.