Advertisers Want Alternatives to Amazon. In-Store Media Can Provide Them

Digital out-of-home breathes new life into brand experiences in physical settings

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Massive shifts in the advertising landscape are forcing CPG brands to explore new platforms and channels for their advertising spend.

P&G’s Marc Pritchard recently called for a shift away from upfronts and toward programmatic TV ad transactions. Mobile in-app advertising, especially on Facebook, is suffering in the wake of Apple’s privacy changes. And open web advertising is next up for disruption, thanks to Google’s forthcoming elimination of third-party cookies.

At the same time, advertisers are pouring money into a platform that reinvented the concept of retail media: Amazon. The ecommerce giant began the trend of retailers acting as publishers, connecting advertisers with rich first-party data and massive transaction-inclined audiences.

But advertising costs are soaring on Amazon, and many brands are uncomfortable investing so much of their media dollars into a company that at times acts competitively and offers very little by way of negotiating power. Advertisers are eager for other opportunities to reach shoppers in retail environments—even in the physical world.

Here are some tips on how the retail industry can step up and provide media alternatives.

Capitalize on shopper intent

There’s a reason Amazon has become the third player in the triopoly with Google and Facebook: first-party data. Amazon has first-party shopper intent data at a massive scale. This is why advertisers turn to Amazon: to reach shoppers who have demonstrated not just interests aligned with their products, but intent to buy them.

Fortunately for CPG advertisers, Amazon is not the only forum for intent-rich retail media. Walmart, Target, Lowe’s and others offer similar online capabilities. But the majority of retailers are still ignoring their most valuable asset and powerful indicator of intent: physical stores and the consumer’s presence in them.

The online environment is oversaturated with brand messages, and customers can easily scroll by ads at the top of a page of product search results. But placing retail media on screens or shelves in-store offers CPG advertisers the chance to reach customers at the point of purchase without creating a feeling of intrusion or oversaturation.

Bring the targeting capability of digital to real-world interactions

In the past, in-store media offerings were miles away from competing with the constant optimization and contextual targeting available online. Too many retailers today are still focused exclusively on traditional shopper marketing offerings like aisle stickers, shelf pop-outs and window displays. There are digital in-store capabilities that can offer buyers many of the online media benefits.

Retailers that invest in developing in-store digital signage networks can provide engaging ad formats coupled with transaction, mobile and contextual data to target and optimize campaigns on the fly.

Consider a medicine brand that wants to reach customers likely to be in the market for its products. In-store targeting can go far beyond simply partnering with a retailer whose customers tend to buy the product and placing advertisements near the medicine aisle. The retail media partner can use the brand’s first-party customer data, mobile location data and contextual signals such as weather to deliver relevant ads in-store to reach the customers most likely to convert.

Advertisers can place digital in-store ads on top of kiosks, in checkout aisles, on shelving units, and along the entrances and exits of store locations. They can also leverage in-store audio ads to reach qualified audiences programmatically. Done right, digital out-of-home retail advertising offers many of the same targeting and digital optimization capacities as Amazon.

Seize the opportunity

We know that brands want alternatives to Amazon and that retailers have the capabilities to deliver, but they have yet to fully invest to create the in-store experiences that brands desire.

Now is the time for retailers to take hold of the opportunity before them to create new digital experiences for advertisers by capitalizing on their in-store shoppers and connecting their siloed teams. They must focus on how to leverage all of the powerful insights across customer experience, IT, digital and media offerings.

Brands must also push their retail partners to provide these enhanced opportunities so they can connect with shoppers at their point of purchase. Not just through the window displays, flyers and product promos, but through data-driven, dynamic video and sound on high-impact screens.

Retailers already have what it takes, but are they going to use it?