We talked about Walmart, Home Depot, Instacart, Ulta Beauty, & Gopuff launching their commerce advertising ecosystems in our previous articles.
This article will cover Bestbuy, Albertsons, Dollar Tree, and Tesco to continue our series covering the top retail media ad networks launches and updates worldwide. They have recently joined the others eying the $50 billion market.
Best Buy
The consumer electronics and technology retail giant launched Best Buy Ads targeting the electronics brands and advertisers from autos, quick-serve restaurants, gaming, movies, financial, movies, and other categories.
Owing to the billions of customer interactions each year, Best Buy boasts of a "real depth of engagement that helps serve their customers effectively — but can also deliver insights for their ad partners."
The massive amount of first-party customer (transaction & interaction) data will allow Best Buy to create niche customer groups like DIYers, Sports Enthusiasts, Family Movie Lovers, Home Renovators, Cooking Aficionados, Club members, amongst others.
These user cohorts will immensely help advertisers understand the audiences and deliver the right messages & offers to the segments of their choice.
Given its wide online & offline reach, Best Buy offers a range of ad formats - Search, Display, Video, Social & Store Ads for its partners to reach their target audience wherever (Online, Social Media, or Offline Stores) they are.
With more than 180+million customers (more than 70% of the US adult population), Best Buy Ads will surely turn out to be a crucial platform for advertisers to explore.
Albertsons
In the last quarter of 2021, Albertsons, the grocery retailer, launched an in-house retail media ad platform for CPG (and other) brands called Albertsons Media Collective, developed in partnership with CitrusAd and Merkle.
To compete in the space with Walmart, Kroger, Target, and Instacart, Albertsons Media allows local advertising to CPG companies that others don't offer.
Additionally, to woo advertising dollars from brands, not in the grocery or CPG space, the retailer promises to run ads beyond its ecosystem - through ConnectedTV & other video companies.
Recently, Albertsons partnered with the technology startup Firework to develop short-form and live-streamed (shoppable) videos to boost its sales & engagement on the platform.
With the ad platform, the retailer aims to tap into its 100 million shoppers across the country, including more than 2,200 store locations and, more importantly, over 27 million members of its Just for U loyalty program.
Dollar Tree
Not a new entrant in the space, but definitely worth a mention. In April 2021, Dollar Tree launched Chesapeake Media Group, an ad-buying platform for brands to connect with customers in a personalized and ultra-targeted digital experience like never before.
The discount variety stores chain partnered with Swiftly and Aki Technologies to enable CPG brands to roll out advertising campaigns on its properties (Family Dollar mobile app and FamilyDollar.com) in real-time when the final purchase decisions are made.
With close to 14 million loyalty (Family Dollar Smart Coupons®) program members and 15,685 stores in the US & Canada, the addition of the retail media network had to be the most obvious choice.
Chesapeake Media Group provides full-funnel solutions and closed-loop reporting. Key strategies and placement options include promoted items, category takeovers, brand experiences, premium advertisements and coupon placements, personalized videos, static interstitial advertisements, expandable rich media, and standard banners.
Tesco
On November 30, 2021, Tesco launched 'Tesco Media and Insight', powered by dunnhumby, becoming UK's largest closed-loop grocery Media and Insight platform.
This partnership between the retail giant and the data science leader (dunnhumby) will provide the brands and agencies unprecedented scale and engagement.
Tesco Clubcard, the flagship membership program, is opted in by over 20 million households in the UK alone. Nearly seven million users actively use their mobile apps, adding to Tesco's deep data points on its customers. Dunnhumby's expertise will surely bring out the most relevant insights making the advertisers flock to the platform.
The numbers are already out!
As per the early results, Tesco Media and Insight platform generate an average ROAS of as much as £6.60 compared to an average of £3.80 on other channels.
Is the Pie big enough?
With more and more retailers (mostly the big ones) launching their in-house media networks and joining the race, will there be any room for others (the mid and small-size retailers) to reap any benefits of the retail media networks?
Experts believe the pie is big enough for many players to survive in harmony as long as they bring the much-needed zero & first-party data on the table. A report by Forrester states - "As zero- and first-party data becomes mission-critical for marketers in 2022, data-rich retail media networks will rise to the occasion. "
Also, the pie is getting bigger. The same report expects the retail media ad revenues to surpass the revenues of media giants like Netflix and YouTube.
The third and most crucial factor to drive retail media momentum is the demand from advertisers. As per a report by Merkle, 81% of the CPG brands plan to boost their investment in retail media over the next year.
