LAS VEGAS – Online retailers such as Amazon and traditional store chains such as Walmart have built billion-dollar businesses in selling different kinds of advertising on their websites. In order for the retail media marketplace to grow and possibly overtake televised media – not including streaming or connected television (CTV) – advertisers will need more tools to evaluate campaign effectiveness.
“Any agency person that you talk to in this space that is dealing directly and having experience with retail media is going to tell you that measurement is still a challenge,” Joanna O’Connell, an industry consultant, said in this video recorded here at the ShopTalk 2023 exhibition.
“They’re still looking for more sophisticated measurement, faster measurement, more closed-loop measurement. More cohesive and holistic measurement,” she said. “And frankly, measurement will drive investment.”
Because the retail industry as a whole is one of the biggest buyers of advertising, there’s the possibility of tensions between their ad-sales teams and their marketing teams who buy ads across a variety of media outlets.
“There’s just the natural tension between the buy-side agencies and brands, and in this case, a new sell side, which is to say retailers. They are now the media companies,” O’Connell said.
As media sellers, retailers must be prepared to provide advertising services and support to brands who also supply them with products to sell in stores and online.
“Retailers really believe that they have unique and special characteristics that make them a must-buy, but buyers are used to being able to do things in more kind of holistic and sort of cross-publisher ways,” O’Connell said. “That is going to be a new negotiation point between retailers and the buy side.”
Data collaboration needs to be discussed more often among retailers that are in a position to collect the most comprehensive information about their customers’ buying habits, and advertisers that either want to reinforce those behaviors or conquest new customers.
“The future of data collaboration, where you have organizations that have direct consumer relationships that need to be very thoughtful and protective of their data, but they also need to be able to monetize that data as part of being essentially in the media ecosystem — that’s something I’m watching really closely,” O’Connell said.
You are watching ‘Inside Commerce: Retail Media & What’s Next? Reports from ShopTalk 2023,’ a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by Criteo. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
