Retail media – the practice of putting ads alongside ecommerce store listings – is no longer just the preserve of Amazon and Walmart.
Now more and smaller sellers are also transforming themselves into media networks, too.
In this video interview with industry analyst Joanna O’Connell for Beet.TV, J. William Margaritis, SVP, Digital & Global eCommerce, Reprise Digital, explains how the trend is evolving, and what comes next.
Smaller and greater
Target’s Roundel, Criteo and others have since joined the retail media network craze, with more tech popping up allowing smaller companies to join in, too.
“What we’re seeing is a lot of brands understanding what other retailers can really do for them and get excited about how to reach deeper into other consumers,” Margaritis says.
“It’s exciting to see all of that diversification, all of that long tail of retail media networks starting to really get the love and ways that you can reach regional consumers in a lot of different ways.”
Amongst the others are regional supermarket chains, Margaritis says.
“If you’re launching a beauty product, you know that if you want to get into that the Midwest consumer or the Texas consumer or the Northwest consumer, regional supermarkets are a fantastic way to do that,” he says.
Retail revolution
Reprise Digital is the performance marketing agency inside IPG Mediabrands.
Its stated mission is to “improve your customer flow by making better connections with your customers throughout their path to purchase”.
EMarketer says 2022 will be “the year of retail media networks“, with US spending growing another $10bn to $41.37bn, representing 17.2% of total US digital ad spending.
Going live
Margaritis says agencies have not embrace retail media sufficiently.
But, next up, he sees live commerce, driven by TikTok, taking off in the West, later than it has in Latin America.
“I think it’s going to capture a lot of people off guard,” he says.
“Everyone might be talking about it yet, but no one’s taking the right steps to be prepared when it does hit.”
