How to select a retail media network for your brand?

With many big retailers launching their own retail media networks, there has been an increase in the walled gardens for brands advertising on these platforms. It is of utmost importance for brands to know who their customers are and how they behave online while shopping for products in the e-commerce space. But with retail media networks, these data insights are rarely accessible to advertisers. And there is hardly anything brands can do because they rely heavily on the high-quality purchase intent data that the retailer is sitting on. But as the popularity of retail media networks is gaining momentum, there has been a bevy of retailers who have launched their retail media business, allowing brands and advertisers more access to actionable insights. This blog will discuss how brands and advertisers should select a retail media network to achieve their goals and objectives without getting blindsided.

Clear View of your Customers

Brands and advertisers investing their advertising money in retail media networks should look to ascertain how visible the customer journey is to them. There is no doubt that retail media is growing and is giving advertisers a better return on their investments, but it is also true that brands are usually unaware of the shoppers buying their products through the advertisements on these platforms. So while selecting the retail media network, brands should ask themselves if the platform enables them to get a complete view of their customer’s journey across different touchpoints, devices, and channels. If these data points are accessible to the brands, they can efficiently target the consumers through their marketing outreach activity at the place where they are more receptive to seeing ads. As more and more retailers are coming up with their retail media networks and enticing advertisers to invest in their platforms, brands are in a sweet spot to bargain for more and more insights into their customer’s journey.

Off-Site Advertisement

Most retail media networks focus primarily on onsite monetization for several important reasons. It gives retailers more control over the user experience, the shopper’s purchase intent is high when they are on the shopping website, and the flexibility it offers to personalize the content more to monetize the media. But brands should identify retailers who have built their site traffic through off-site advertising that connects with their onsite advertising. Off-site capabilities enable retailers to expand their reach and drive new traffic to their media network, while for brands, it ensures seamless connectivity and optimization between all retail media channels, resulting in enhanced consumer engagement and additional sales. The onsite advertisement is akin to promoting a brand in-store, whereas off-site media provides advertisers with increased scale to leverage the retailer’s first-party data to target shoppers off the retailer’s website.

Real-Time Analytics

Brands and advertisers should also ascertain whether the retail media network they are working with can provide real-time analytics and insights about their campaign’s performance so that necessary actions can be taken to improve the ROI. Make investments in networks that can provide quick analytics to optimize your campaign performance when it is still live. Furthermore, the network should offer brands total sales views for the entire campaign across each channel. An ideal retail media network allows brands to track their spending to the SKU level.

There is no doubt that retail media networks will be the next big thing in digital marketing, and with the pace at which big retail companies are creating their media businesses on the back of robust first-party data, brands will be increasingly forced to take this advertising route. But many small and mid-size players have leveraged the off-site channels to enter the retail media market as it expands a company’s reach to a larger audience that helps them in scaling their onsite business. But for brands to get the maximum benefits from every dollar spent on the retail media network, they have to be clear about their goals and then identify the most suitable retail partner that ticks the most boxes.