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Macy’s isn’t just a place to buy prom dresses. It’s also a place to buy ads: Last week, the retailer debuted a partnership with Rokt to expand its retail media network. The retailer isn’t alone: Other blue-chip brands like Lowe’s and Chase have built out their retail media offerings this year and courting ad revenue.
Despite the rapid scaling by brands, though, the retail media network landscape needs more collaboration, data customization, and standardization, according to speakers at a roundtable held by the IAB this past week.
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While some brands are jumping on the retail media network brandwagon, there’s been a lot of collaboration missing between them and the brands that want to place ads with them, as well as the agencies they work with, according to Evan Hovorka, VP of product innovation at Albertsons Media Collective.
“We haven’’t always been best friends with agencies, and we haven’t always had to support things like self-serve [platforms,]” he said.
For agencies looking for clarity on which retail media networks clients should invest in, data “clean rooms” have been key to illustrating factors like audience overlap and incrementality, according to Kavita Cariapa, SVP, head of commerce activation at dentsu.
Data clean rooms are also being embraced by retail media networks like CVS Media Exchange to provide more precise, granular data, its head of analytics and business intelligence, Praveen Menon, told attendees. In a collaboration with Pinterest and LiveRamp earlier this year, for example, CVS used data clean rooms to provide data compiled by cross-referencing CVS ExtraCare member purchasing activities with user activity on Pinterest, explained Menon.
Clean up your act
Despite progress on the collaboration and data customization front, there’s still a need for standardization across the retail media networks, a lack of which can wreak havoc for brands buying across different retailers, according to Hovorka.
“Now we’ve seeing another wave of RMNs jump on, and we’re seeing other social platforms adopt a similar methodology, but what we don’t see is consistency,” he said.
“The methodology CVS used could be a little different than ours, maybe better, maybe worse, but it’s different. Then the methodology that a TikTok or a Meta will bring to a closed-loop solution will definitely be different. Then potentially you see these permutations become almost unmanageable.”
To that end, the IAB is rolling out a retail media network lookbook to assist retailers, brands looking to buy ads on their networks, and agencies, Jeffrey Bustos, VP, measurement addressability data at the IAB, said.
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