Retail Media partnerships allow retailers use their first‑party data to integrate with premium publisher audiences to create high‑intent audiences that convert.
The Retail Media story over the past few years started with onsite, then moved to offsite and now to instore. As Retail Media has matured, the next phase of Retail Media Network development is to focus increasing available inventory and maximise the use of retailer first-party data. The fastest and most cost-effective way for RMNs to do this, without investing in lots of new technologies is through partnerships.
Partnerships mean that retailers and publishers combine their ad inventory and audiences giving both greater reach and opportunities for ad revenue. These partnerships address a real problem of Retail Media: brands need large scale audiences, but Retail Media Networks can run out of inventory, audiences and scale if they focus purely on onsite or instore.
Done well, Retail Media partnerships can deliver benefits for each party:
- Publishers can monetise their unique, high-value audiences by enriching their data with retailer’s purchase-based insights.
- Brand advertisers can access previously unavailable, granular audience segments.
- Retail Media Network get new revenue streams by using its data to pairing bottom-of-funnel signals with top‑of‑funnel engagement and offer full‑funnel campaigns to brand advertisers – all without juggling multiple custom integrations.
The challenge for publishers is that they’ve got these very rich signals, but are challenged to connect their data through to sales outcomes. Ocado Ads and Permutive recently announced a partnership that encapsulates this opportunity.
- Ocado Retail offer a complete data set in market thanks to its base of online-only customers and 100% of all shopper behaviour captured.
- Using Permutive’s data collaboration platform, publishers have the opportunity to match their audiences with Ocado’s first-party data to create unique, high-intent audiences across purchase categories and lifestyle segments.
- Future, Immediate, The Independent and News UK are the media partners for the launch.
Ben O’Mahoney, AdTech & Data Partnerships Lead at Ocado Ads explains the deal: “By securely combining our rich, first-party customer purchase insights with premium publishers’ deep understanding of their audiences, the output is unparalleled opportunities for advertisers to reach high-intent consumers with relevant messages.”
Permutive CEO Joe Root, went even further in explaining the deal: “Ocado have all this amazing, rich bottom of funnel data. As you start to look at the full advertising stack, if Retail Media Networks want to drive kind of outcomes from top of funnel to bottom, they needs to start to move up that that funnel. Publishers have this really rich depth of funnel signals which exist today, but these very rarely do these get paired. We can now take the amazing signals Ocado has and ask: what publisher signals drove consumers along the path to purchase, and how do we make those available for advertisers to buy across the ecosystem?”
Root explains this in more detail: “Ocado provides amazing data such as what shoppers have put in their basket over the past week and what they’re continuously buying on a weekly cadence. On the other, across the open internet, partners like BBC Good Food capture rich, early‑intent signals when someone researches, say, cake recipes to bake with their daughter. These signals are paired through to conversion on Ocado, attributing precisely which early signals drove sales. Matching these two sides has never happened until now, and Ocado has enabled it as a first in the UK ecosystem.”
What are the benefits for Ocado?
According to Jack Johnson, Head of Retail Media and Data for Ocado Ad: “First, it benefits the industry by broadening the use of retail data across more advertising use cases. Ocado Ads don’t have to build a sales or execution team. We simply provide the data into the existing ecosystem. Speaking to customers on these publications lets us hit a much wider set of brand objectives. Ocado is leveraging the data partnership and the go to market partnership to redistribute Ocado data in a way which would be very hard to achieve otherwise.”
What do the publishers say?
“By combining our first-party data with Ocado’s purchase behaviour data, we’re leveraging even more trusted signals to deliver more meaningful purchase-cycle aligned ads, translating to stronger sales and ROI for our advertisers” said Jamie Samuel, Director of Commercial Product at Future.
Andy Morley, Chief Revenue Officer at The Independent. “We have an exceptional understanding of our audience across The Independent globally. Fusing this with Ocado’s insights will allow us to further increase the impact of campaigns in a data-driven manner, whilst safeguarding the privacy of readers.”
This partnership between Ocado Ads and Permutive sets the precedent for how publishers and Retail Media Networks can collaborate to bring more opportunities in the shape of insights and inventory to advertisers. Helping brand advertisers to expand audience reach and measure the impact in outcomes from a retail perspective through partnerships is the next phases of Retail Media.
