Marketers of consumer goods for years have sought to persuade the purchase decisions of people as they shopped in brick-and-mortar stores. Shopper marketing has included everything from in-store displays to coupons printed at checkout to help drive purchase consideration. In the digital age, shopper marketing has evolved into retail media – or showing targeted ads to online shoppers based on data about their purchase histories.

“Brands, and the agencies who represent them, are desperate to get access to that kind of data, to the purchase data,” analyst Joanna O’Connell said in this interview with Beet.TV. “The transactional kind of data that these retailers have that help brands make kind of smart media investments, understand the value of those media investments, so that they can reinvest for growth.”

Retailers that historically have seen slim profit margins from selling goods can expand their profits by selling advertising to brands that are willing to pay a premium to reach people when they’re most ready to buy.

“The traditional retail business where they’re literally selling stuff off of shelves works at a certain margin — and it’s relatively thin,” O’Connell said. “The media business, on the other hand, when you’re charging CPM’s [cost per thousand] where the cost is essentially just associated with the management of getting ads on pages and the people that are necessary to do that and the tech to support it, creates more upside.”

You’re watching “Retail Media: What’s Next?” a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by Albertsons Media Collective and Criteo. This video was produced at Beet.TV’s Retail Media Leadership Dinner in NYC. For more videos from this series, please visit this page