Retail media is a rapidly growing trend that is changing the face of retail advertising and how retailers think about the relationship of their digital and physical stores. With the rise of digital technologies, data sources and the customer’s focus on e-commerce, retailers are starting to think differently about the shopping experience they offer to buyers. In this article, we will explore the growth of retail media, the benefits it offers to brands and retailers, and the role of programmatic DOOH (Digital Out of Home) in this ecosystem.
The growth of Retail Media
Retail media has emerged as a new revenue stream for retailers as they look for new ways to monetize their physical stores. In recent years, retailers have been digitizing their operations and stores, creating digital channels such as websites, mobile apps, and social media pages to engage with customers and enable a quick purchase. With the obvious growth and demand for these digital experiences during COVID times, the level of sophistication of these tools have exponentially grown. Although when people came out of lockdowns, the physical store became a great point of discussion again. But now not only as a point of purchase, but also a branding experience and a way for brands to communicate with their clients. Digital screens were one of the first things to catch up. After years of digitizing the old school posters and signs with screens and digital signage software, retailers found themselves with a large quantity of screens that if opened up as Ad space to the OOH advertising world, retailers can create a significant revenue stream from external ads, especially for supermarkets and multi-brand department stores.
Another benefit of this strategy is that apart from selling ad space to brands, the retailer itself also gains a new communication channel, highly similar to any other digital channel, to reach their target audience. With the difference that in this case, is already an engaged customer, already inside their store and with a clear intention of purchase. This is what we call the last point of influence. This strategy complements perfectly with traditional advertising methods, although the challenge now lays on how to link different data sources together to understand how the shopper experience which might have started on a mobile ad, or a street level ad, ended up on a physical store purchase.
Benefits of Retail Media for Brands and Retailers
From a brand perspective, retail media is a perfect match. Customers are already engaged with the potential product in some way and are ready to buy something. Impulse buying plays a big part in shopper behavior, and retailers can leverage this by placing relevant ads and promotions right in front of them. A direct Call to Action can now be also present in the real world just like it is in our digital life.
For retailers, retail media provides a new revenue stream from ad placements, creates a new communication channel with their own clients and at the same time, if done correctly, it can enhance the customer experience.
This is easier said than done, of course. Like any good marketing strategy and communication, data is key when getting to its implementation. Using the right tools to plan, target, optimize and measure the outcomes is key to building good practices that can work at scale.
The Role of Programmatic DOOH in Retail Media
Let’s start with defining what Programmatic DOOH is at first. pDOOH is the automated process of buying and selling advertising space in digital screens located in public or private spaces. It eliminates the need for a retailer to hire a full sales team to sell these ad spaces enabled in their in-store screens. It follows similar technology and structure as digital advertising but adapted to the nuances of OOH as a communication channel.
One of the key changes that pDOOH produces is the evolution of selling Ad space time to sell audiences. So instead of selling a period of time on a screen, it uses audience metrics to sell a reachable number of Impressions or Impacts. The evolution of selling time to sell audiences is very powerful as it puts brands in control of their budget, creates transparency on their returns and it helps the owner of that space to optimize inventory.
To achieve this, real-time data collection tools need to be in place to enable advertisers to target audiences based on demographics, location, and other factors. Retailers are well-positioned to capitalize on this growing trend. Without being constrained to old data conventions, being their own landlord for their assets, and having access to POS and customer data, sometimes in abundance, it makes them the perfect fit for an industry that is exploding in growth. This is why retail media is one of the main channels to quickly adopt programmatic DOOH.
There are multiple ways to collect data from various sources, which will provide different types of insights on audiences. From computer vision for footfall verification to mobile data for profiling and retargeting, retailers can use existing technologies to make the most of programmatic DOOH and enable their brands to target customers at the moment that matters the most.
At AdMobilize, we help retailers to measure their audience data in real time, get real insights easily and communicate it to the right partner platforms, to allow this automated selling process to happen. This way our clients are able to have several platforms selling ad space for them, all they need to do is open their inventory, set the rules, and connect their data. Request a Demo with us, to learn more or go to https://admobilize.com/retail/