5 Functions & Features Of A State Of The Art Retail Media Platform
Walmart released its Q2 earnings, a 30 % growth in its quarterly ads revenues, powered by Walmart connect and Flipkart Commerce Clouds Ads. Walmarts ads revenue was disclosed at $2.1 billion in ads in 2021, surpassing the $2 billion milestone twice as fast as Twitter.
While the earlier decade was the era of social platforms redirecting buyers to ecommerce sites, CMOs and CFOs have identified retail media as a big opportunity to increase the mere 13.2% buying activity on their platforms with a little aid from retail and adtech.
These rapidly growing retail media networks are a critical part of the future of retail, ushering retailers in every category from Kroger, Dollar Tree, Kohls, Best Buy, Lowes, and CVS to launch retail media networks. In US alone Retail Media Networks will exceed $52 billion in ad sales by 2023
While the co-op model of advertising with brands paying a part of the expenditure was popular since the early 200s, it gave little to no control on product placements to the parties with skin in the game. Any traditional or modern retailer will tell you that product placements made all the difference to product sales, in shop buying behavior is driven a lot by the placement of products . So why not opt for retail media and drive both – monetisation and profitable selling? And what kind of retail media solution would help you optimize both?
Incremental revenues from retail media seem to be the best answer to the
eroding spends on digital marketing for retailers. Tapping right into a customer’s intent of shopping from an ecommerce site by a timely showcase of brands and products bleeds less of your marketing budget by maximizing conversions.
With privacy becoming a huge factor in advertising, the optimal use of first party data without intruding on the target audience is also becoming a necessity. Again, retail media is a timely and apropos solution.
But are all Retail Media Networks built equal? The answer is obvious. Let’s deep dive into what features make a retail media network a source of monetisation rather than another distraction in the ever expanding eCommerce and retail universe :
5 Ways Retail Media Networks Contribute To Retail Profitability :
1. Enhance shopper experience.
The best shopper marketing tactics improve the experience for shoppers. Shoppers benefit from a well-placed end-cap introducing a new product or a stylishly merchandised outfit on a mannequin. However, it’s not a helpful shopping experience to flood shoppers with irrelevant search results that the highest bidding advertiser has purchased. Retail media networks need to balance organic visibility with paid media and ensure that the paid media is highly relevant to the shopper’s current mission.
2. Build Bidding algorithms That Benefit Platforms & Partnering Brands
Today, most retail media networks cater to platform profitability but the best retail media networks like Amazon’s and Walmart’s are built with the purpose of helping brands maximize their returns on ad spends(RoAs).
Bidding algorithms should be scientific, transparent and tailored to give both parties a fair deal. Otherwise, the ad spends just seem like an unnecessary tariff that brands pay to compete with others on one of their many selling channels. A transparent ad platform gives greater power to brands by giving them insights and detailed reports on their RoAs. Brands need to see the impact of those ads on in-store purchases and across longer decision cycles to justify value. Platforms should also aim to differentiate their adopted networks and retail media technology with the features in mind.
3. Self-service is the way ahead :
Retail media network features, such as specific ad formats, audience targeting, and reporting, depend upon working with an Ad- Ops team . A retail media network that supports more SKUs and smaller advertisers at scale, will need to provide more comprehensive self-service interfaces and APIs for third-party tools. The Flipkart Commerce Cloud Ads Manager has been built to cut ad ops by a huge margin. It ensures that you do not spend the time and resources on running a parallel team. The best retail media suites come with creative ad studios, whitelabelling software with clear guidelines and easy to use interfaces for end users. Look for a platform that best serves you and your partner brands.
4. Be more dynamic on TAM with an advanced Audience Manager & AI Powered Relevance Models :
Advertisers need to be able to target audiences dynamically but also serve up ads with dynamically-generated content. The very best digital advertising platforms (such as Meta and Google) allow real-time optimization.
Artificial intelligence algorithms run thousands of marketing experiments, adjusting creative and audience targeting in real-time to arrive at the most effective advertisement quickly. Retail media networks that offer similar level of optimization are few but existing. Flipkart’s own principle of innovation are built on sound data foundation. A retail media partner that offers you optimisation base on relevance, user history , search queries and knows how to rank these features for the best optimisation.
5. Get Cracking on Having Multiple Formats Fast :
A clothing brand is very different from an electronics brand, they fall under the cumulative term retail but brands need a diverse platform to help them showcase their products to make an impression. Having multiple formats in the inventory and a single creative studio to access them all means that a well rounded retail media partner has built your retail media platform. Branding and positioning and is a huge advantage if you are trying to sell rand sthe idea of on-platform selling.
Of course these features are starting points and a lot of other factors contribute to the enhancing advanced retail media platforms such as ours. We would love to introduce CMOs to the concept of retail specific bidding algorithms next. These help increase profitability for marketplaces and brands and lead to huge wins for both parties. Subscribe to our blogs to get these insights in your in-box.