The retail industry has seen some drastic changes in the past few months due to the pandemic and the resulting lock-downs. From the products that the users are buying to the way they are buying has changed for good.
Keeping the Brick & Mortar business aside, Digital Commerce Advertising needs a new approach to service to the customers' changing needs and expectations. Certain segments, especially which come under the leisure and impulsive purchases like travel and hospitality, have seen a negative impact while financial services and insurance have seen an uptake among the users. It is evident from the way users are searching the web.
One segment that saw the biggest jump during these times was the Essentials. Be it food, groceries, or medicines; people across the country are getting comfortable ordering these online. With footfalls on existing and new online platforms (web & app), there is a need to encourage users (especially the recent adopters) to come more frequently so that the gain is not lost once things go back to normal.
Gone are the days when standard advertising methodology was the way in Commerce Advertising. In the initial days, Advertisers did not have many options to select the platform to sell their products. Standard Banners Ads were displayed on Amazon or eBay or and similar ones. Few other Platforms emerged over time. Now there are Direct to Consumer (D2C) brands formulating a new way to sell (read more).
During this accelerated digitization Phase, advertisers understood that growth is not certain if they go through the traditional route. So, they started showing ads in the Sponsored Content Section; Special Ad Units were introduced. They also started using Keyword targeting. But again, this helped in achieving only short-term goals. The reason being - broadcasting of ads does not help in the increase in sales. It has to be customized as per the market's or consumer's needs. The question of Sustainability came in.
As a result, advertisers embraced the solutions offered through Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. They are now moving towards an enhanced version of digitization, i.e., automation.
As it is apparent that, in Commerce Advertising, there are way too many variables that a human alone cannot consume, interpret, and render. Therefore, Smart Algorithms and Machine Learning are used to handle all the dynamic parts of the advertising workflow and provide near-real-time information. These are also utilized in making websites, mobile apps, and ads more personal to the end consumer.
Hence, using such algorithms, successful advertisers nowadays develop more cost-effective, ROI driven campaigns.
How do advertisers can create more ROI driven campaigns which are more cost-effective?
Let's take a step back to understand "automation". The key ingredients for automation are - Personalization and Data Management, at scale without much human intervention.
Personalization - It is important because the user's chances of making the purchase increases when they see personalized ads, offers, and content.
40% of shoppers have purchased due to a personalized ad, and 31% of shoppers are more loyal to brands that personalize ads. Additionally, 43% of consumers say digital advertisements should be personalized, and 29% said they would be more likely to buy something if an ad was personalized.
Source: DigitalCommerce360
Now how to create personalized experiences for individual users?
This is achieved by activating and mobilizing the First-Party Data, which includes (but not limited to) logged-in user, user's purchase history, demographic, location, and their browsing history.
Though, it is easier said than done. Not everyone with first-party data can utilize it. When it comes to getting the results, a good analytics system is needed to answer questions like -
How was the sale on a Week on Week basis by individual products & categories? How to Identify frequent and loyal visitors? How is the campaign spending money in terms of Impressions or clicks or conversion? Is there a scope of optimization?
And at the end of it, bind all these answers to create a unified view for advertisers to make decisions.
All these questions are as important to eCommerce and other platforms sitting on first-party data ready to be mobilized as they are to the advertisers. The onus lies with such platforms to enable the advertisers to create personalized campaigns for the users and thus build a successful experience for everyone involved.
Advertisers can make smarter decisions, tweak campaigns strategically only when they have an intelligent reporting and optimization systems at hand.
Fortunately, there are solutions out there in the market to help platforms monetize their inventories in the most effective way.
With more than 7 years of experience under its belt, Kritter has transformed into a platform that caters to all three areas - Personalization, First-Party Data Mobilization, and Customer-centric Analytics.
A Case-Study
India's leading e-commerce payment and digital wallet company benefited greatly from Kritter's On-Premise Solution. Here's how -
The Ask
The Firm was in search of a monetization platform, where
- they can make good use of their First-party Data, collected from multiple user touch-points.
- they don't have the risk of sharing that critical information with any Third-party Ad Platform.
- the cost of building an In-house ad platform can be avoided.
- most importantly, they can go live within days, and experiment with ad inventories, and optimize on the go to scale.
The Solution
Kritter provided the firm with a customized solution that -
- was a Ready-to-use White-label Solution
- had the facility to onboard the firm's raw First-Party Audience Data
- provided with an option to segment that data so that it is readable and targetable
- enable then to work with both Direct Advertiser (Brands) and other Agencies
Kritter's Solution was deployed on Client's Cloud giving them complete ownership of the framework and data. Then securely on-boarded User Data onto the Kritter platform and created custom segments, which were then made available for targeting via the user interface.
The Results
Kritter's Ad Trading Stack is a white-label, Plug & Play Platform where Advertisers, Brands, and Agencies can start their campaigns in no time. The system is fully customizable, and since the solution is deployed on the Client's premises, the data remains under a secure environment.
