Ad Formats and Placements to make the most of your retail media network
Once you have decided to launch your retail media ad network or a commerce advertising platform, you need to get down to the details. You will start with allocating or hiring the resources, provisioning the budgets, partnering with the right technology provider, and forecasting the revenues for the next few years to mitigate the costs incurred.
One crucial element that comes a little late in the journey is inventory management - identification and optimization.
Ad inventory for a website or an app is the amount of advertisement space that the publisher (in this case, a retailer) makes available to advertisers for bidding and rendering their ads.
The dilemma that most publishers face while allocating ad inventory is how to balance maximizing the number of ad spaces while maintaining (if not improving) end consumer experience).
When we talk about ad formats, retail media networks generally use two major types - images and videos.
The success of retail media in terms of ad inventory optimization lies in how these two ad formats are used to deliver more relevance to the end-user without being too intrusive.
Here are a few common and effective ways retailers use their advertising inventories to increase their revenue -
Banner ads on the homepage or home screen
These ad placements can be static or carousel in nature, highlighting the best deals, offers, or product launches. The ads rendering here can be the same across the website or app for all users, or they can be personalized to each user of the user cohort using the first-party data that the retailer has.
Sponsored Brand Ads
This kind of ad gives advertisers or brand partners space to showcase their best products and offers to users looking for the same or similar products in real-time. This ad unit appears on the search page and directly corresponds to the search query.
Sponsored Product Ads
These ads also appear in the search results but, similar to native ads, are hidden within the organic results. An ad platform maps the query put into the search box to the advertisers' settings and delivers ads depending on the system's ability to exact or broad match the keywords.
Sponsored Display Ads
Sponsored display ads appear on the product detail page in similar products or "you might be interested in.." sections. Attributes from the product on the detail page are used to match the best ads to be displayed next to it. The unit allows advertisers to present their best products and offers right before the customer takes the final step. This also allows the customers to not miss out on a better offer before adding the product to the cart and making the purchase.
This sums up the four most commonly used ad placements by the retailers and eCommerce players.
Now let's look at what differentiating ad opportunities Kriiter Ad Trading Stack provides its partners to generate additional revenue and deliver more value to the advertisers and end-users.
DCO - Dynamic Creative Optimization
This ad placement involves customer data and segmenting them into smaller cohorts to deliver more personalization. The ad on the left column (image below) shows a different creative to different user groups or cohorts, based on test parameters, such as location, demography, past purchases, and others.
This allows advertisers to deliver more targeted messages with a single ad campaign on your commerce advertising platform. At the same time, the end-user sees something that resonates well with their aspirations and needs.
Out-stream video ads
Specific search queries can be targeted to deliver these video ads, which appear on top of the existing page or screen layout. The ads can be set to display when the users spend a set amount of time on the screen or scroll to a specific place on the page.
Full-Screen Video Ads
Videos are, undoubtedly, the best way to convey a message or value proposition for brands. When on a specific page, a user may be confused about selecting the right product, product value, full features, and product usage; a video can be a great way to help them understand. A full-screen video can be set to seamlessly appear on spending a set time or number of scrolls on the page and goes away on further scrolling or clicking the cross button.
Inventory identification is one of the fundamental steps towards website or app monetization and launching retail media advertising network. This paves the way to inventory optimization, which is a topic of discussion for another day.
