“Retail media”, the ecommerce spaces which are now also selling ad inventory, are booming in popularity, in part, because that inventory is so close to the bottom of the marketing funnel, the check-out.
But this emerging category of media doesn’t have to just be about retail, says one marketer who founded a company to help power shopper marketing.
In this video interview with industry analyst Joanna O’Connell for Beet.TV, Teresa Aprile, CEO & Co-Founder, Brandcrush, a company jsut acquired by Criteo, says retail media can be so much more.
Bigger than digital
“Retail media is related to all the touchpoints that reach shoppers on that path to purchase, so it’s holistic,” she says.
“It is in store, that’s one element. It’s out of store, and it’s online. In that online space, it’s more than just onsite and offsite. It’s also social, it’s circulars, it’s loyalty, it’s all that kind of jazz,” she explains.
Aprile says the physical store site remains a key component of the omni-channel mix. She points out that 80-90% of grocery shoppers still shop in-store.
So what is an optimum in-store experience? That can include digital screens outside and inside the store, floor decals, product sampling, shelf talkers, magazines and recipe apps,” Aprile says – all much broader opportunities than ecommerce site slots alone.
Search for the holy grail
Aprile’s 20 years of marketing experience led her to create Brandcrush as an owned media platform that enables businesses, retailers, and influencers to reach shoppers more effectively.
It offers a solution for retail media orders, inventory and supplier management, enabling self-service discovery and booking of shopper media.
The platform addresses the fragmentation in the retail media ecosystem and helps retailers capitalize on their owned media opportunities.
In March 2023, commerce media platform Criteo acquired Australia-based Brandcrush, saying it would help it help clients “manage their entire media inventory across both ecommerce and physical retail while enabling brands and agencies to seamlessly discover and purchase omnichannel media from leading retailers”.
Beyond silos
Aprile believes that retailers are essentially media giants who have yet to capitalize on these owned media opportunities.
“When they look at each of those channels, they look at them in silos, they’re executing them in silos,” Aprile says.
The answer is in bringing those silos together.
“It’s like the holy grail of marketing to be able to see that single view of your supply investments and to see those moments of media impact along the shopper journey,” Aprile says.
You are watching ‘Inside Commerce: Retail Media & What’s Next? Reports from ShopTalk 2023,’ a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by Criteo. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
