In recent times, the number of people viewing online media has grown exponentially. Digital marketing placements and tools can be adopted by businesses to navigate these circumstances to their benefit. Moreover, retail media networking can reach a wider customer base, as consumers are consistently engaging in more shopping, watching, and listening online.
Retailers can set up advertising platforms on their websites, apps, or other digital platforms within their network. With retail media networks stores, brands can advertise to customers in digital formats at or near their point of purchase, or provide a choice between competing goods or brands. This can be achieved using the three largest online advertising platforms: Google, YouTube, and Facebook.
This blog aims to provide an understanding of retail media networks, their trends, future scope, and how Kritter can add value and additional revenue streams through retail media network launches for retailers, eCommerce players, and other commerce platforms.
The Rise of Retail Media Networks
Google, YouTube, and Facebook are the three largest online advertising platforms. Google owns a 71% share of the search market and is the world's largest online display advertising network, while YouTube has over 1 billion people watching more than 6 billion hours of videos. Along similar lines, Facebook has around 2 billion monthly users.
Brands that invested in mobile apps and websites used by customers to shop for products and get them delivered to their homes were instrumental in generating sales for retailers when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and nations went into lockdown.
A survey shows that online purchases have increased by 6 to 10 percentage points across most product categories. It is estimated that digital advertising will account for ₹35,809 crores out of the expected total advertising of ₹93,119 crores by 2023 at a 14.75% CAGR.
Here are a few trends that are gaining popularity in retail media networking:
- The number of tools at the disposal of consumers to make purchase decisions has altered buying patterns. The availability of the internet, smartphones, magazines, TV, and brick-and-mortar businesses have created a new form of marketing known as "omnichannel" marketing.
- Google has rolled out AMP (accelerated mobile pages) for ads and post-click landing pages to boost user experience by speeding up the web and reducing disparities in the browsing speed of different countries. It is estimated that delays in loading mobile sites translate to $500 billion in lost revenue for the eCommerce industry.
- A new type of ad format that has been generated is the "out-stream video." It allows publishers to show video ads outside of actual video players, for instance, in-text line breaks, or the corners of web pages.
- Marketing automation technologies greatly assist digital marketers in tracking everything online. This saves time and resources for marketers and provides greater insight into strategies that can drive business.
- Remarketing ads can largely convert visiting customers into buyers.
Advantages of Retail Media Networks
Some of the challenges that retail media networks pose include:
- Driving engagement across more channels,
- Preventing tiring ads,
- Privacy regulations and policy changes,
- Fraudulent traffic,
- Lack of experience and transparency in delivery and reporting,
- Client education,
- Market saturation, and
- Increased competition.
While these are challenges that enterprises can work through, it is important to invest in retail media as it is advantageous to retailers, consumers, advertisers, and brands.
Let us now look at the pros of retail media marketing.
1. For Retailers
Retail media networking enables retailers to tap into the digital advertising industry, which is estimated to surpass $526 billion by 2023. It helps generate revenue and profit margins on consumer packaged goods (CPGs).
2. For Consumers
Retail media networks provide customers with better price control. An increase in prices can drop traffic and reduce ad revenue. They also offer a better customer experience and help make better purchase decisions.
3. For Advertisers
Retail media gives advertisers access to first-party data, which is collected and owned by website owners. This data is clean and more reliable than third-party data, thus providing better insight into the behavioral patterns of buyers. With this information, you can generate personalized ad campaigns.
4. For Brands
Sales can be easily attributed to ads, and it is easier for brands to relate ad expenditure to sales. This helps in making strategic decisions concerning resource allocation.
Future of Retail Media Networks
Digital shopping experiences are shaping buying patterns and behaviors of consumers. Despite this trend, experts emphasize that brick-and-mortar shops will continue to stay; the belief that they are obsolete is merely a myth.
Shops and stores can foster a service-oriented environment by amalgamating support with technology. For instance, 3D visualization and AR technology can be used to combine store products with customers' very own designs of products.
Rather than shops being an outlet for sales alone, they can be transformed into centers that offer customers immersive brand experiences. This will expose them to brand messages and lifestyles surrounding the brand. Furthermore, shop outlets attract, engage, and loyalize consumers.
The advent of advanced technologies like big data, smart factories, 3D tech, AI, IoT, and machine learning, has brought about the 4th industrial revolution. Its impact can be noticed across all fields. It has reshaped the way enterprises manufacture products and customers search for, engage in, and shop for products.
Businesses have started digitizing and automating their businesses, thereby reducing human interventions and increasing productivity and profits. With digitization, brands can collect information and insights about consumer behaviors and offer more precise and personalized services supported by mass customization.
Furthermore, with Google's crackdown on third-party cookies in 2022 due to increasing privacy concerns and failure to provide alternative identifiers for users, marketers now have to get more creative than ever in using data, particularly for their remarketing efforts.
As a result, about one-fifth of marketers plan to actively incorporate email marketing in their remarketing and lead nurturing efforts.
Further, with the launch of Google's Performance Max campaigns and announcements to halt smart shopping campaigns, it is evident that these companies are nudging advertisers to rely on their AI engines and ML models to target and deliver ads.
Conclusion
Retail media networks have an exciting and promising future. Businesses and brands have started understanding their necessity and are developing efficient and customer-oriented strategies to develop their businesses, and with good reason. Retail media networks offer excellent services, engaging in-store experiences, customization, and automatization.
If you are looking to deploy a retail media monetization solution, Kritter is your go-to digital advertising technology company. Kritter provides you with a ready-to-go ad trading stack (ATS) and a robust data management infrastructure (DMP) to manage your first-party and third-party data.
The ATS can be utilized as an ad server, a demand-side platform (DSP), a supply-side platform (SSP), and an ad exchange. Kritter also assists you in solving engineering problems in the digital advertising space.
All in all, with expertise in ad-serving, real-time bidding, distributed data platforms, exchanges, scale management, and advertising infrastructure, Kritter can offer you a highly customizable, ready-to-go ATS and DMP, along with the consistent support of our tech and ad operations teams.
