Whilst much of the breathless talk about Retail Media is about the size and scale of the opportunity, it’s not exactly a linear trajectory from the current state to a future state of nirvana.
Here are five challenges to the potential of Retail Media:
#1 Can retail media unlock new budgets?
According to BCG’s June 2024 Retail Media report, “How Retail Media Can Top the CMO Agenda”, brands have been relying on shopper marketing and trade budgets to fund retail media’s growth to date. They say that “brands are reluctant to turn to other funding sources without a step change in retail media and its results.”
What is required to unlock additional brand dollars? Given that brands like retail media networks because of their access to first-party data, some of BCGs recommendations should not come as a surprise:
- Share Data: BCG suggest that retailers “flip the script” on data and share data-driven insights with brands much more than today.
- More Insights: Retail Media Networks will need to offer advertisers more than today, for example, offering data and insights in a way that they have never received from the retailers’ merchandising departments.
- Expertise and Excellence in Media: Retail Media Networks are competing in the world of ‘media’ with behemoths such as Google, Meta and Amazon playing at the media ‘game’ for years. Media such as programmatic ad buying and real-time reporting will need to as good as anything else in the world of digital advertising.
#2 Can brand and retailers fix internal silos?
FMCG brands typically break down their teams and budgets into the follow ‘buckets’:
- Brand budgets to build and promote the brand – creating visibility to drive mental availability and consideration.
- Trade budgets to influence the performance of suppliers at retail.
- Shopper marketing budgets to impact shopper behaviour instore to generate purchase decisions.
- Digital marketing budgets to convince and convert on search, social, video, email and other digital channels.
Each of these teams operate separately from retail media teams. These silos create conflicts as all of these teams are working with exactly the same brands.
Within the retailer, the challenge is not dissimilar. Retailers have trade marketing or “merch” teams and category teams who operate separately from account management and from the Retail Media teams.
The reality is that..
- Budgets sit in individual teams
- KPIs are associated with those teams
- Expertise sits in those teams
- Expertise is not exchangeable
Internally, getting teams to work together means changes in the ways of working. Cross-functional teams with the retailer and the advertisers are the way to go, but this change is not easy – making the execution of a cohesive brand strategy very challenging.
#3 Can measurement and metrics improve?
A familiar refrain for the last number of years about Retail Media Networks is the lack of measurement tools, complicating performance analysis of product listing ads on their websites.
As Andrew Lipsman of Media, Ads and Com writes: “Retail media is moving up the funnel into streaming TV, instore retail media is rising and the impact of offline attribution data means that more measurement frameworks will need to be introduced. This will move the conversation away from just focusing on incrementality or conversion as being the most important measure.”
However, different marketing goals require varied metrics. Frederic Clement, Co-founder, Mimbi, believes that advertisers should embrace fragmentation: “To navigate effectively, brands should focus on core business objectives, streamline operational requirements, and leverage partners to connect data and buying. Consolidation and convergence will come, but getting back to fundamentals is the best path forward.”
The reality is that many of these complaints will be addressed as measurement standard have radically changed in just one year. The various IAB chapters around the world have released robust new standards for retail media for online, offsite and instore. The more these are adopted, the more the complaints should – in theory – go away.
However, this is bound to be continued for a long period. As the pace of technology changes, such as shoppable ads, means that measurement methods might need updating.
And, can we really say that arguments about metrics, measurement and attribution have gone away for Google or Meta?
#4 Can retailers invest more instore?
Retail Media Networks typically begin with onsite ads – also known as sponsored products or sponsored search. RMNs then expand to include both on-site and off-site advertising, often incorporating a third-party DSP and using social media channels. Off-site advertising is accelerated through various partnerships between RMNs and media companies.
The next stop is to develop instore digital advertising. As Media, Ads and Commerce’s Lipman writes, “In-store retail media will emerge from digitising surfaces at the checkout aisle, endcaps, smart carts, and cooler doors”.
However, retailers will need to invest in their stores to capitalise on the in-store digital ad opportunities. Scaling will requires significant capital investment or new models from the screen suppliers that change the model from capex to opex, so retailers expenditure can be realistic.
Where will the money come from? Do retailers have the money to kit out thousands of stores with 4+ screens of various shapes and size, with a custom CMS, and custom AdTech? They might have, but this an amount of capex that no CFO will sign off.
The costs are huge. Time for the screen vendors to deliver new commercial models.
#5 How can brands choose from the proliferation of options?
Determining the most effective retail media network amidst the surge of new options can be challenging for marketers. Every time an advertiser adds a new retail media network, it adds complexity to an organisation. Some don’t have the bandwidth
IAB Europe insights director Marie-Clare Puffett says: “The explosive growth of retail media has created a scattered landscape. Brands waste valuable time analysing and normalising results across different platforms, hindering strategic planning and decision-making. More well-trodden channels like paid-search and social media at least “offer scale and consistency”.
Over the past few years, US brand Georgia-Pacific evaluated around 40 retail media networks, as it now spends more than 20% of its media budget on retail media networks. It conducted trials with more than 25, measuring across the CPMs of retail media networks versus national media networks, the capabilities on offer, data quality and incrementality measurement. Those factors helped Georgia-Pacific decide to concentrate 90% of its retail media budget on seven key networks, including Amazon Advertising, Walmart Connect, and Kroger Precision Marketing.
Indeed, the biggest challenge that Georgia-Pacific found was data quality. Its Digital Marketing Director pointed out that “the quality of the data was not the same across each network. Data transparency from the networks is key. They told you that they had 1st-party data, they weren’t always giving 1st-party data to activate against them. Some were layering in additional sources of data like third-party data in order to get the cost down.”
The lesson is that certain retailers still have work to do to convince marketers to spend money on them.
Stay informed
Our editor carefully curates a dedicated Retail Media newsletter on a bi-weekly basis, filled with up-to-date news, analysis and research, click here to subscribe to the FREE newsletter.
You are in: Home » Retail Media » OPINION The state of retail media mid-2024: five challenges
OPINION The state of retail media mid-2024: five challenges
Colin Lewis
Whilst much of the breathless talk about Retail Media is about the size and scale of the opportunity, it’s not exactly a linear trajectory from the current state to a future state of nirvana.
Here are five challenges to the potential of Retail Media:
#1 Can retail media unlock new budgets?
According to BCG’s June 2024 Retail Media report, “How Retail Media Can Top the CMO Agenda”, brands have been relying on shopper marketing and trade budgets to fund retail media’s growth to date. They say that “brands are reluctant to turn to other funding sources without a step change in retail media and its results.”
What is required to unlock additional brand dollars? Given that brands like retail media networks because of their access to first-party data, some of BCGs recommendations should not come as a surprise:
#2 Can brand and retailers fix internal silos?
FMCG brands typically break down their teams and budgets into the follow ‘buckets’:
Each of these teams operate separately from retail media teams. These silos create conflicts as all of these teams are working with exactly the same brands.
Within the retailer, the challenge is not dissimilar. Retailers have trade marketing or “merch” teams and category teams who operate separately from account management and from the Retail Media teams.
The reality is that..
Internally, getting teams to work together means changes in the ways of working. Cross-functional teams with the retailer and the advertisers are the way to go, but this change is not easy – making the execution of a cohesive brand strategy very challenging.
#3 Can measurement and metrics improve?
A familiar refrain for the last number of years about Retail Media Networks is the lack of measurement tools, complicating performance analysis of product listing ads on their websites.
As Andrew Lipsman of Media, Ads and Com writes: “Retail media is moving up the funnel into streaming TV, instore retail media is rising and the impact of offline attribution data means that more measurement frameworks will need to be introduced. This will move the conversation away from just focusing on incrementality or conversion as being the most important measure.”
However, different marketing goals require varied metrics. Frederic Clement, Co-founder, Mimbi, believes that advertisers should embrace fragmentation: “To navigate effectively, brands should focus on core business objectives, streamline operational requirements, and leverage partners to connect data and buying. Consolidation and convergence will come, but getting back to fundamentals is the best path forward.”
The reality is that many of these complaints will be addressed as measurement standard have radically changed in just one year. The various IAB chapters around the world have released robust new standards for retail media for online, offsite and instore. The more these are adopted, the more the complaints should – in theory – go away.
However, this is bound to be continued for a long period. As the pace of technology changes, such as shoppable ads, means that measurement methods might need updating.
And, can we really say that arguments about metrics, measurement and attribution have gone away for Google or Meta?
#4 Can retailers invest more instore?
Retail Media Networks typically begin with onsite ads – also known as sponsored products or sponsored search. RMNs then expand to include both on-site and off-site advertising, often incorporating a third-party DSP and using social media channels. Off-site advertising is accelerated through various partnerships between RMNs and media companies.
The next stop is to develop instore digital advertising. As Media, Ads and Commerce’s Lipman writes, “In-store retail media will emerge from digitising surfaces at the checkout aisle, endcaps, smart carts, and cooler doors”.
However, retailers will need to invest in their stores to capitalise on the in-store digital ad opportunities. Scaling will requires significant capital investment or new models from the screen suppliers that change the model from capex to opex, so retailers expenditure can be realistic.
Where will the money come from? Do retailers have the money to kit out thousands of stores with 4+ screens of various shapes and size, with a custom CMS, and custom AdTech? They might have, but this an amount of capex that no CFO will sign off.
The costs are huge. Time for the screen vendors to deliver new commercial models.
#5 How can brands choose from the proliferation of options?
Determining the most effective retail media network amidst the surge of new options can be challenging for marketers. Every time an advertiser adds a new retail media network, it adds complexity to an organisation. Some don’t have the bandwidth
IAB Europe insights director Marie-Clare Puffett says: “The explosive growth of retail media has created a scattered landscape. Brands waste valuable time analysing and normalising results across different platforms, hindering strategic planning and decision-making. More well-trodden channels like paid-search and social media at least “offer scale and consistency”.
Over the past few years, US brand Georgia-Pacific evaluated around 40 retail media networks, as it now spends more than 20% of its media budget on retail media networks. It conducted trials with more than 25, measuring across the CPMs of retail media networks versus national media networks, the capabilities on offer, data quality and incrementality measurement. Those factors helped Georgia-Pacific decide to concentrate 90% of its retail media budget on seven key networks, including Amazon Advertising, Walmart Connect, and Kroger Precision Marketing.
Indeed, the biggest challenge that Georgia-Pacific found was data quality. Its Digital Marketing Director pointed out that “the quality of the data was not the same across each network. Data transparency from the networks is key. They told you that they had 1st-party data, they weren’t always giving 1st-party data to activate against them. Some were layering in additional sources of data like third-party data in order to get the cost down.”
The lesson is that certain retailers still have work to do to convince marketers to spend money on them.
Stay informed
Our editor carefully curates a dedicated Retail Media newsletter on a bi-weekly basis, filled with up-to-date news, analysis and research, click here to subscribe to the FREE newsletter.
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