At the launch event for Retail Media Age, a new UK publication dedicated to retail media news and innovation, we heard from programmatic platform MiQ, broadcaster ITV and IAB Europe, the trade association for digital marketing and advertising. As well as exploring the trends driving the retail media revolution, they discussed the key opportunities for retailers and brands looking to evolve and grow their retail media networks (RMNs).

Levelling up: How tech & data are democratising retail media

When considering the rapid rise of retail media, Nadine Warren, Advanced Advertising Manager at ITV, suggested innovation has helped reduce the tech gap – and with it, the barriers to entry – allowing smaller brands to launch their own RMNs and dedicated ad divisions.

“The pipes and plumbing have definitely improved,” she said. “Retailers and media owners have done a phenomenal job of getting the AdTech in place.”

“Essentially, the playing field has been levelled as tech and data have become democratised, which is why we’ve seen an explosion in off-site RMNs.”

Nadine Warren, Advanced Advertising Manager, ITV

For Deborah Rosenthal-Davies, Head of Solutions at MiQ, the rapid advancement is part tech, but also part connectivity, which is being driven by data access. “There is a big aspect of improving technology – but also improving connectivity between the programmatic world and retailer data,” she said. “All these different data partners are looking for new ways to put their insights into the hands of media buyers, which, in turn, is helping to shorten the tech gap.”

Lauren Wakefield, Marketing & Communications Director for IAB Europe agreed, pointing to the advancement, not just in AdTech capabilities for activation, but also in measurement, evaluation and attribution. “This is really the first time brands are able to easily understand and measure the impact of retail media, linking attributable ads to a sale or a shopper action,” she said. “Now, we have true closed loop attribution, which wasn’t that accessible before.”

Recent IAB Europe research showed access to first-party data has become a key driver in RMN acceleration; almost 90% of the media buyers it polled are motivated by access to retailers’ insight-rich first-party data, while three-quarters are drawn by the opportunity to reach conversion-ready consumers at the point of sale.

Warren pointed to the powerful proposition of “being able to reach customers in those high-intent moments and environments where they are close to making a purchase.”

In-store presents the next phase of RMN growth

A key growth area isn’t just in off-site RMNs, but it’s also about in-store retail media activations. For Wakefield, this is all about bridging the gap between online to offline engagement with shoppers. “It’s about tapping into that space where we can reach consumers in-store in the moment when they want to purchase,” she said.

UK shoppers’ propensity to be influenced by in-store ads at the shelf-edge is growing, according to research from ADvendio, an omnichannel advertising solution provider.

Original research of over 1,000 UK consumers by ADvendio showed that 51% would be more likely to buy a product if they were served digital ads in-store, rising to 62% of Millennials. Meanwhile, over a third (36%) said retail advertisements would make them try a product they hadn’t bought before, driving up confidence, consideration and conversion at the shelf-edge.

Data layering & the rise of the multi-retailer approach

According to Rosenthal-Davies, the “multi-retailer approach is more prominent than ever before.” Those building RMNs are now starting to layer data from multiple sources to improve customer segmentation, offering more nuanced, context-led and granular insights into shopper behaviours to inform hyper-targeted engagement.

“Retail media growth – and so far an untapped opportunity for brands – will increasingly rely on taking first-party data and layering additional segments of retail audiences to better understand where shoppers are browsing, buying and watching.”

Deborah Rosenthal-Davies, Head of Solutions, MiQ

This means going beyond understanding what shoppers are buying from a single retailer, and layering data from other sources, such as TV consumption habits or the content they consume online, to get a more holistic view of the customer to enhance off-site retail media strategies.

Data augmentation could also come from blended data sets, taking insights from more than one retailer or from more than a single channel.

Take grocery as an example; with shoppers now completing their weekly food shops across several supermarkets rather than just one, this presents an opportunity to drive higher growth by blending layered data from across multiple grocery retailers. That way, the campaign benefits from aggregated buying signals and enriched targeting due to multi-faceted and multi-layered data segmentation.

“Data layering – or what we call ‘competitive collaborators’ – helps enhance data sets and gets under the skin of how shoppers browse, buy and consume content,” said Warren.

This not only improves targeting and personalisation, but it can also help in improving user experiences when serving ads, Warren added: “when blending RMN into formats like TV, we need to be mindful of the user experience.”

Additional data cuts and real-time monitoring of customer behaviour helps ensure retail media engagement doesn’t interrupt the flow of content consumption. “Essentially, we don’t want ads that disrupt or interfere with the user experience,” said Warren.

Retail media is not just about performance marketing – it’s brand awareness too

Looking ahead, while performance will remain critical in assessing and evaluating retail media campaign success, RMNs are just as much about brand awareness as they are about performance marketing, said the panel.

And, because of this, brands need to build in both short-term, performance-based metrics – like conversions, sales and opt-ins – alongside longer-term, more loyalty-based KPIs, such as Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), customer acquisition or re-engaging lapsed shoppers. “Measurement around those long-term metrics need to be factored in as well,” said Warren.

The future of retail media “needs to be regarded as a broader holistic space where brand and performance can co-exist comfortably together,” Rosenthal-Davies concluded.