Engaging shoppers across the entire customer journey with retail media

Over the past few years, the e-commerce industry has seen massive growth. In the US alone, retail media networks are expected to exceed a collective $52 billion in ad revenue by 2023.

 

Rapid innovation from online retailers has given brands a unique opportunity to not only grow, but access granular data to help better inform their ad-buying decisions. And as they look to reach, engage and convert customers across the entire shopper journey, access to this data will become a critical lever for success.

 

So what exactly does this mean for advertisers looking to stay on top of this ever-growing ecosystem?

 

Intraday reporting and optimisation

 

There have long been attempts to rationalise how shopping behaviour on retail media networks varies over the course of the day. Historically, advertisers have had to come up with theories on what works best, then test them, spending significant time manually changing bids by the hour to maximise the efficiency of their budgets.

But Amazon has brought this age of guesswork and hunches to an end with its new Amazon Marketing Stream product. Advertisers can now access granular hourly advertising performance data on advertising cost of sales (ACOS), cost-per-click (CPC), conversions, impressions and much more. 

 

Equipped with this data, advertisers can build advanced dayparting strategies to optimise their ads by hour of the day and day of the week. At Perpetua, this is built directly into our app, alongside hourly share of voice data, so advertisers can execute their campaigns against whatever their goal may be.

 

Ultimately, Intraday trends and optimisation will become a baseline for advertisers looking to win coveted placements across Amazon search results and better understand their market share in comparison with their competitors.

 

And while Amazon has spearheaded this initiative, you can expect other retail networks to quickly follow suit, such as Publicis’s SaaS platform, CitrusAds.

 

Moving up the funnel

 

Gone are the days when bottom-funnel tactics were enough. With online competition rising for brands, it is now critical to invest in brand-building initiatives to drive awareness among potential buyers not yet in the market.

 

Retail networks such as Amazon, Walmart, Instacart and more are continuing to invest in upper-funnel ad units – leveraging dynamic display ads and connected TV, and engaging creative such as video to expand a brand’s reach and target shoppers with the intent of eventually converting them further down the funnel.

 

While the impact of brand-building on sales can be immediate, the full effects often take longer to play out as consumers come into the market and begin buying journeys. However, our data shows that performance ads work more effectively when buyers are already aware of a brand. This is especially effective within retail media channels that have closed-loop measurement – they can both create future demand and capture the sale, effectively measuring the impact of these upper-funnel tactics.

 

While consumers are shifting more of their spend online, there is still a large proponent of brick and mortar purchasers, with under 20 per cent of all retail sales in the US coming from e-commerce. As a result, advertisers need to begin leveraging retail media ads to drive in-store conversions. Upper-funnel ads will then become important levers to ensure brands are top of mind prior to entering a retail location.

 

This magnifies the power of loyalty programs such as Amazon Prime, Walmart Plus and Target Circle. The marrying of identity and transaction data through these programs is incredibly valuable, and retailers that have invested heavily in making these programs as ubiquitous as possible are in the best position to provide omnichannel measurement solutions to brands. For example, Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods has enabled it to now track and measure Amazon users who purchase there using their Amazon account. This means advertisers who leverage upper-funnel tactics on Amazon can now attribute those impressions to in-store purchases at Whole Foods.

 

Marrying data and the proliferation of data clean rooms

 

Outside of Amazon’s unique Whole Foods closed-loop measurement, measuring the impact of upper branding campaigns has been no easy feat. But now marketers can finally attribute downstream effects of brand campaigns on conversions and sales.

 

Amazon is leading the way here with Amazon Marketing Cloud, a data clean room that allows marketers to run private and secure queries to map shoppers across the customer journey. We’ve found this most effective in how it informs brands of the increased likelihood of a customer to convert from seeing a connected TV ad, compared with those who have not seen a connected TV ad.

 

At Perpetua, our business intelligence team have become experts in Amazon Marketing Cloud. The team works with brands and agencies to provide full-funnel performance metrics and benchmarks to effectively create a holistic media plan rooted in results. For example, we’ve found that over the top (or OTT) video ads on Amazon drive the most sales 7-10 days after exposure, and not immediately after.

 

And we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible here. Amazon Marketing Cloud is still in its infancy. While we expect other retail media networks to follow Amazon in developing their own clean rooms, we believe that – given Amazon’s technological prowess – Amazon Marketing Cloud will emerge as an industry tool for generating insights across all commerce touchpoints and purchases.

 

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To learn more about retail media and driving e-commerce growth for your brand, head to perpetua.io.

 

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By Adam Epstein, Co-President, Perpetua