This post was created in partnership with Albertsons
Retail media networks are relatively new, and the learning curve for brands and retailers can be steep. But understanding them can be an extremely powerful tool for reaching consumers.
During an ADWEEK House Advertising HQ panel co-hosted with Albertsons, Mitchell Parton, senior commerce reporter at ADWEEK, sat down with Julian Mintz, VP of ad sales at Albertsons Media Collective, and Dani Mariano, CEO of Razorfish, to discuss the current state of retail media networks and how marketers can leverage their power.
Unifying the media and merchandise experience
Mintz started the conversation with a brief history of media networks, explaining that it’s still a new concept for many retail organizations. One current challenge is getting the media and merchandise flow together to create a unified experience.
“The whole point of media in the retail space is to sell products, but if it’s not connected to what’s happening on the shelf, both physical and digital, it makes it kind of hard,” Mintz said.
Mintz told a story from personal experience of a campaign for a product that ended up being out of stock.
“The brand spent all this money on media promoting it, and then it wasn’t in stock, and that’s because on the retailer side, the media sellers, media team, and merchants weren’t talking,” Mintz shared.
Clarifying and crafting the narrative of media networks
Mariano acknowledged the narrative that retail media is an additional cost for merchants, but “widening the aperture,” or expanding what marketing can be, presents an opportunity for growth despite that pressure.
“We’re at a moment where every touchpoint is a brand experience, and so thinking of dollars as siloed doesn’t benefit the brand or the customer experience,” Mariano explained. “For us, we don’t see it as just trade dollars. We see that as an opportunity to make sure that we can round out budgets that are under a lot of compression pressure.”
Mintz chimed in, saying it helps to think of retail media dollars as a “growth lever,” rather than a cost.
“Growth isn’t free. You have to invest for growth,” Mintz said. “We’re not asking brands to necessarily spend more money on media, in general. What we do advise is that you spend more of your marketing money pointed directly at an audience of a retailer.”
Using data creatively
Retail media networks are powered by large amounts of data, but Mariano explained that it’s only part of the equation in helping brands understand their customers. Instead, retail media data can be added to other consumer data to create a “very robust picture.”
“It’s an opportunity to better understand consumers, how and where to reach them, as well as what are the right messages for where they’re at in their life cycle,” Mariano said.
For non-endemic brands, retail media data can still have potential when used creatively. Mintz talked about using related product sales data to target a potentially interested audience.
“The example I always give is if you’re looking to sell life insurance, knowing that somebody just bought diapers for the first time can be a really powerful data signal,” Mintz posited.
Ultimately, if retail media networks can drive a brand’s business, a brand will deem them successful.
“The best thing you can do is drive their business and make them feel it,” Mintz added. “We’re going to be running media, and if they see their sales go up, and we can show them data, and they feel it in their business, that’s when it’s truly going to matter.”
