CANNES – Retailers that sell advertising make up one of the fastest-growing parts of the media marketplace. Drugstore chain CVS Pharmacy in 2020 set up a retail media network called CVS Media Exchange, or CMX, to provide marketers with a way to reach audiences based on their product searches and membership in its loyalty program.
“We have the benefit of being a 25-year-old loyalty program in CVS ExtraCare, and with that, customers are using their card 86% of the time,” Pamela Young, head of sales at CVS Media Exchange (CMX), said in this interview with Beet.TV contributor Jon Watts at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
“We’re able to see majority of the purchases that come through our stores, and that means that I can do a ton with that information,” she said. “I can understand what was in the basket from the product that we talked to you about, also what else was in the basket, and provide a significant amount of insights when you think about it from the bigger picture.”
CVS ExtraCare has 74 million members, while 139 million people a year visit CVS’s online properties. In addition, about 5 million people a day visit one of its brick-and-mortar stores to pick up a prescription or to shop for personal care products, household items, greeting cards or packaged foods.
“We have 74 million customers. We understand what they’re doing. We’ve watched them go through multiple life stages and changes across the 10 years that we’ve had a relationship with them, on average,” Young said. “It really provides that opportunity to connect the data to the actual in-store purchase.”
Relationships with Suppliers
Retail media networks are changing the relationships between merchants and the brands that seek space on store shelves or on commerce websites. As advertisers, brands want to be assured that retail media networks are delivering measurable outcomes.
“As we have evolved from a retail media perspective, it allows us an opportunity to talk to the brands, it allows us an opportunity to talk to the CMOs, and really understand what matters to them,” Young said, “because at the end of the day, it’s accretive to us if we can drive more sales at our stores, but also if we can drive more love and brand loyalty to these brands.”
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