ANALYSIS The trouble with omnichannel

The IAB Europe Omnichannel Guide to Retail Media was recently released. It’s starts off on the most important challenge of the whole report itself: “The challenge with omnichannel is the word ‘omnichannel’ itself. The word means different things to different people, and it means something different in every retailer or Retail Media Network”.

The report quote Lee Dunbar, SVP, Retail Media, Starcom U.S as saying: “If you’d like to add 20 minutes to any meeting, ask what omnichannel means. The term triggers as many different definitions as it does eye rolls”.

The IAB recommendation this that you must make the decision to what you mean when they are talking about ‘omnichannel’ as “without a clear and common understanding and language, the team will take longer to make decisions, struggle with getting buy-in internally and potentially confuse both clients and their own senior management”.

‘If you’d like to add 20 minutes to any meeting, ask what omnichannel means. The term triggers as many different definitions as it does eye rolls.’

The report then quotes some examples:

• In Retailer X, they may have online sponsored search, in-store screens, instore radio, click and collect, but not delivery. For Retailer X, when they talk about omnichannel, this is what they mean.
• In Retailer Y, they have online sponsored search, sponsored display, CRM, offsite with Meta and Google, in-store screens, delivery but no click and collect, For Retailer Y, when they talk about omnichannel, this is what they mean.

With this in mind, IAB Europe defines Omnichannel in a Retail Media context as follows:

What is ‘Omnichannel’ in Retail Media?

“The utilisation of multiple Retail Media channels (including on-site, off-site and in-store) to reach shoppers and create a seamless customer experience with advertising.”

The report differentiates omnichannel from multi-channel.

Multichannel means promoting a product across different channels without considering the shopper journey.

The report emphasises that ‘omnichannel puts the shopper and their relationship at the centre of all marketing planning.’

Finally, the report points out that ‘If omnichannel’ is part of the overarching business strategy, omnichannel in the context of Retail Media is a subset of the business strategy. This distinction is important, because if the retailer does not have omnichannel as a strategy, they will be hard pressed to make it work for their retail media business’

What does an omnichannel ecosystem look like?

It can be hard to envisage an abstraction like omnichannel distribution. 

A number of years ago, Kiri Masters, wrote about the Revlon’s omni-ecosystem, where each channel has its own benefits and drawbacks, and different types of consumer needs it can uniquely meet.

The Revlon Omnichannel Approach

The analysis of the Revlon omnichannel approach is simple yet subtle:

• Pureplay specialists have the advantage of close shopper relationships and high category relevance, but they lack scalability compared to Amazon.
• Amazon offers the potential for high traffic but not such a premium experience for premium brands.
• Stores offer the experience to touch and feel the merchandise
• e-Retail or Retailer.com – where Revlon would be aggregated with other products offers lots of built in traffic, but can be difficult to get the level of detail that Amazon offers.

What is the connection between each of these four? Each of these is likely to have a Retail Media offering.  And, as the IAB EU report points out:

An omnichannel Retail Media campaign has the ability to:

• Reach and engage a broad audience
• Deliver personalised and relevant advertising
• Provide seamless consumer journeys
• Enhance brand visibility
• Offer flexible and scalable solutions
• Ensure cost efficiency with a higher unique reach, number of new customers, ROI or other KPIs depending on the campaign goals.

The future of omnichannel

There is only one thing that we can say about the future that is guaranteed and it is this: “Shoppers want to shop for products online, in an app, in-store and pick them up or get them delivered to their home.”

What do the IAB suggest to address this? Adopting a customer-centric culture

We all need to move away from an organisation structured entirely around silos and instead to a customer-centric culture. This starts with mapping out customer journeys which enables organisations to understand how customers are engaging across different channels and touchpoints.