LAS VEGAS – Publicis Groupe’s Epsilon unit aims to make advertising on retail media networks more effective with this month’s launch of Epsilon Retail Media. The platform applies artificial intelligence and person-level identifiers in the ad server to help brands target shoppers on retailers’ media properties and the open web.
“When we talk about person-level identity, it really solves a lot of the industry’s problems when you think about potentially hitting the same person with five or six ads, thinking that you’ve hit five or six different people,” Dave Peterson, general manager and global head of retail media at Publicis Groupe’s Epsilon, said in this interview with Beet.TV contributor Tameka Kee at ShopTalk.
Epsilon Retail Media’s offering comes as brands face challenges reaching consumers who divide their time among a variety of media channels and connected devices. The landscape has grown even more fragmented as retailers expand their efforts to sell advertising. Adding to the complexity is the loss of signal – or the diminished ability to gather insights about people’s exposure to ads and their plans to buy a product – as technology companies give customers more tools to protect their privacy.
Epsilon’s Core AI analyzes every potential shopper to ensure all potential buyers are evaluated for engagement, while its Core ID helps recognize an individual in any channel and feeds additional data on the shopper into the AI’s decision-making.
Epsilon Retail Media seeks to “help retailers get the most out of their data and help advertisers really realize the outcomes they’re looking for when they work with retailers and retail media,” Peterson said. “Managing frequency is really important, so we’re not over-messaging. In other cases, we might not be reaching people that actually do care about a product because we can’t identify them in the industry. We solve for that.”
Epsilon’s AI determines where and when to engage shoppers, decides how often to engage them across channels, harmonizes engagement across channels and improves the spend on an impression based on the value of the shopper.
“Our AI is optimizing and making decisions on what ad to serve, where to serve it real time,” Peterson said. “That really is a lot different than how a lot of people in our industries think about optimizing today.”
You’re watching “Retail Media: Let’s Talk Shop,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series at Shoptalk 2024, presented by Epsilon. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
