Marketing
22 March
Walmart extends retail media to CTV, in-store sales
Walmart DSP and Sam's Club are applying first-party data to enhance creative and measurement for advertisers.
(Photo courtesy of Sam's Club)
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At its core, retail media is designed to provide advertising within an ecommerce marketplace. But as this nascent area develops, it is quickly expanding beyond the retailer’s website.
This week, two entities under the Walmart Inc. umbrella announced new capabilities that illustrate where retail media can play a role in CTV and in-store sales.
Let’s take a look:
Sam’s Club: In-store attribution
Advertising that appears on a website doesn’t only have the potential to drive online sales. It can also help to propel sales at stores.
A new capability announced this week by Sam’s Club is offering a way to measure across both channels.
The membership club announced that in-store sales can now be attributed to search ads that appear on its ecommerce site.
Sam’s Club said its Member Access Platform will use first-party data on member transactions to determine the revenue that is generated by particular search and sponsored product ads, including for purchases made in a store.
In media measurement, attribution is sought by advertisers as they seek to determine the effectiveness of a given ad or campaign, and where to direct spend in hopes of reaching more consumers. But if an ad in one place leads to a sale in another, it adds complexity to the task of assigning credit for a sale. That’s especially true of offline sales, since there is often less information on the behavior that leads up to the store-based purchase available.
“There’s a huge group of our members who see a search ad online or on their phone when shopping but purchase the product in-club. Previously, it was not possible for our advertisers to connect the in-club purchase to their online ads to know what drove sales,” said Tim Simmons, senior vice president and chief product officer, Sam’s Club, in a statement. “With our new attribution model, advertisers can understand what’s motivating purchases across all channels accurately, especially for search ads.”
With this addition, Sam’s Club said it can now offer “true closed-loop measurement” that crosses online and offline sales. The retailer said overall ROAS has increased by nearly 30% for advertisers that have added in-store sales attribution.
The new offering illustrates how digital commerce is driving both online and offline sales. Media must continue to evolve along with shopper behavior.
Walmart DSP: CTV partnership with Innovid
Alongside retail media, another fast-growing area of digital advertising is media that appears on streaming services, which is known as CTV (Connected TV). A new partnership shows there are opportunities for the first-party data that powers retail media to serve as a bridge between the store where they shop and the couch where they watch TV.
Walmart’s media arm will work with Innovid to make more personalized creative for CTV available for advertisers through the retailer’s demand side platform.
Innovid will provide “creative personalization, optimization and interactive experiences,” as well as offer ad delivery services.
The integration of Innovid’s Dynamic Creative Optimization technology is designed to improve “relevance and effectiveness” of CTV ad creative that is available on Walmart DSP, which is powered by The Trade Desk..
"Through Walmart DSP, marketers can more effectively reach Walmart's millions of customers across inventory, optimize their media spend, and connect with consumers on highly sought-after platforms like CTV and beyond," said Krista Panoff, SVP of global enterprise development at Innovid.
The partnership will allow advertisers to tap first-party data from Walmart, and apply it to campaigns that reach customers on channels and platforms beyond the retailer’s properties. Walmart DSP provides measurement that crosses both online and offline channels, the retailer added.
This is the second announcement in as many weeks that shows how first-party data from retail media can be applied to enhance CTV. Best Buy and Roku recently announced a partnership that will put the electronic retailer’s first-party data to work for targeting and measurement on Roku streaming devices.
As advertisers seek new ways to efficiently and effectively reach customers on a web that is moving beyond third-party tools and cookies, the partnerships underscore how retailers are in a prime position to provide the purchase-level data that can help to provide results.
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Retail Media
7m
Gopuff moves fast on a new retail media approach: Non-endemic ads
The quick commerce marketplace is partnering with Rokt to expand beyond CPG advertising.
(Photo via Gopuff)
In some ways, retail media campaigns function like promotions in a brick-and-mortar store.
With retail media, brands can reach customers with advertising on the websites where shopping is taking place. This proximity to the point of sale provides an opportunity for brands who are already selling within a marketplace to take advantage of opportunities to elevate their position in search results, and stand out from a crowd of listings. This is the same goal that many brands have when they purchase highly-trafficked space in a store. But instead of checkout aisle and endcap placements, there are now sponsored products in search results.
But that’s not the end of the story.
The fact that retail media is internet-based and powered by first-party data collected at the purchase level is poised to open up new opportunities to reach consumers that go beyond today’s norms.
One such example is the introduction of non-endemic advertising. This allows brands that aren’t directly selling a product within a marketplace to purchase ad space.
Why would a brand want to advertise in a place where they can’t make a direct sale? The thinking goes like this: The marketplaces have the audience, and the data on them that allows for precise targeting. They can be places to learn about a new product, just as much as they can be a place to buy.
One early example of the recognition of the opportunity in non-endemic advertising arrived this month. The quick delivery marketplace Gopuff partnered with ecommerce technology company Rokt to enable brands outside the CPG category to advertise on Gopuff’s app.
Under the hood, the companies are combining machine learning technology from Rokt that is designed to present relevant offers to customers with a Gopuff audience that is made up of Gen Zers and millennials, engaged and curious about trying new brands.
The partnership will enable advertisers to target customer segments by demographic and location. Customers will also receive offers to try new brands, such as Hulu, AdoreMe and Noom.
What sets this advertising approach apart will be the consumer categories where it is focused. Typically, ads on Gopuff are focused around the convenience store items already available on the app. Now, shoppers will see other kinds of products in the mix, and they will click through to checkout pages that are outside Gopuff if they are interested in buying. This also has the potential to change how advertisers approach media spend. It means everyone from a sporting goods brand to a car company can now consider Gopuff as they plan. They must also consider how these channels work together as a whole.
"We are thrilled to partner with Gopuff and enhance its ad business, helping it move beyond the CPG category," said Elizabeth Buchanan, CCO of Rokt, in a statement. "By delivering relevant offers to Gopuff users, Rokt will help Gopuff Ads' brand partners across all categories create more meaningful customer connections and drive incremental sales."
The partnership underscores how retail media networks have three key building blocks for digital advertising: They’re a destination that people visit with an intent to shop, they have the audience that brands want to reach and they have data that can help to reach the right consumers.
It points to how ecommerce marketplaces can not only become the new store, but also emerge as ad networks like Facebook and Google before them. It’s a big reason why retail media networks have exploded over the last year, and why growth is forecast to continue to accelerate.
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