5 Ways Brands Can Find the Right Retail Media Network

Media networks are yet another retail trend we can trace back to Amazon. The ecommerce giant launched its own version nearly a decade ago and has since brought in billions in incremental advertising revenue, spurring other retailers to jump on the proverbial bandwagon. The option only became more appealing as the death of third-party cookies loomed and consumers shifted to ecommerce during the pandemic. Now, brands have more options than ever before to reach consumers at not only Amazon, Walmart and Target, but also smaller, more specialized retailers like CVS, Walgreens and Family Dollar, along with Home Depot, Best Buy, Ulta and Instacart, to name a few. Elizabeth Marsten, senior director of strategic marketplace services at performance marketing agency Tinuiti, conceded that because there are so many media networks to choose from now, it can be hard for brands to figure out the right one to use—but it’s not impossible. Here’s what to consider. Size For starters, brands can simply allocate their ad spend based on the size of their wholesale channels. In other words, the more they sell at a certain retailer, the more they invest. “Painting with a broad canvas, if 25% of my sales go through Amazon, I might put 25% of my investment there and 20% in Walmart and 15% and Target accordingly,” said Tim Rogers, svp and global general manager of omnichannel and CRM at media platform Criteo. Marsten agreed the number of products a brand offers at a particular retailer is a good barometer, which generally benefits bigger platforms. “If you have 100 SKUs at a Walmart versus five SKUs, you're going to choose differently on where you place your bets,” she said. “Rule of thumb has been Walmart has volume. Target also has volume, but I would say currently not as much as Amazon or Walmart. But there's definitely a Target consumer demographic that goes with that.” In a similar vein, Dan Chester, vp of retailer business development at martech company Quotient, said to consider the size of the audience a retailer can bring. “It's still, at the end of the day, all about results, right?” he added. “So having omnichannel measurement to be able to prove your media network can deliver the results for those CPGs is critical for the retailer, so [brands] can repeat campaigns, [execute] more campaigns and [bring] larger budgets into the retail media network.” Product-category fit Depending what a brand manufactures, product assortment may also play a role. “If I'm selling toilet paper, Best Buy is not going to be a great channel for me,” said Nich Weinheimer, general manager of commerce and retail media at marketing platform Skai. “If I'm selling flat screen TVs, Amazon is interesting, but Best Buy’s the golden goose … even though a lot of people buy flat screen TVs on Amazon, it's not the degree that people buy flat screen TVs in the omni sense of Best Buy.” That’s also true in categories like fashion, where an otherwise dominant player like Amazon doesn’t exactly dominate. That means fashion brands would be wise to consider alternate networks like Macy’s, he added. Relationship Another aspect to consider is what Marsten called “legacy commitments.” “If the brand is 50 years old and they've been in that store for 40 years, that retailer is a whole different dynamic than someone who maybe got picked up in the last two,” she said. That’s why Marsten asks the brands she works with what the retailer relationship is like, as well as their goals, which can include growing sales in stores and/or online, maintaining store space, adding store space or testing new SKUs. “It's really hard. It's been a very organic conversation,” she said. “Typically, it is a stack-ordered relationship though, so let's say Walmart's the big customer. Well, Walmart's going to get a bigger chunk of the budget, then Target and then CVS or Instacart.” Ahead of Q4, Comparing Retail Media Networks Like Walmart, Target, Kroger and More Programmatic tech But brands can also work with ad-tech partners to pull in data about where they are getting the best return on investment (ROI) and tap into technology to help ensure the best ROI. That’s according to Rogers, who noted media partners can help brands find consumers with the highest intent and to make sure they’re promoting the best products with the highest margins. “This is where you get into the more strategic thinking as it relates to execution strategy for a brand,” he added. “And this is where I think the rubber ultimately meets the road and where the investment resides.” From there, brands can expand the scope of their retail media buys from on-site sponsor listings and display ads to off-site advertising based on intent. “Whether it's for the product within the category, historical product purchases [or] historical category purchases, then you can get into extending the targeted reach that can be executed,” Rogers said. “Clearly that might have a lower return on investment, but [it also] might have a higher new customer acquisition value or a higher share shift value for the brand.” Chester agreed the ability to reach customers and prospects offsite is “critical.” “If you're a very mature retailer, you may have 50% of your customers buying online and the other 50% are buying in store,” he said. “So if they're not coming to your website already, you have to reach the customer where they are, which is offsite media. And so for the advertiser what that means is the ability to build a campaign with a retailer offsite, as well as onsite to meet their marketing objectives.” When in doubt … Instacart For the CPG brands that want to kill multiple birds with one stone, Marsten recommends Instacart. “If you don't want to or can't have four different, let's say, drugstore budgets or grocery store budgets, or you just need to hit a larger part of the network in general … Instacart is a great way to put that budget not just in featured products, but they also have some additional banner capabilities that go at what they call ‘aisle level,’” she added. It's also an appealing network because Instacart allows brands to show up in front of “highly qualified users” with just one buy. “You don't open Instacart unless you're going to do something, right?” Marsten said. “Who opens Instacart and starts just browsing around? You have to open it, you have to put in a geography so they know which stores to show you, then you choose a store. So look how far down the funnel they already are.” Instacart Taps Facebook App Head Fidji Simo as Its New CEO

Retail Media Advertising

5 Things Brands Need to Know About Finding the Right Retail Media Network

It’s not as simple as allocating big budgets to big retailers

Lisa Lacy

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Lisa Lacy