Retail Media Campaign Best Practices
Retail media advertising allows brands to influence shoppers right on retailers’ websites and apps. As retailers build out their own digital platforms and collect extensive customer data, new targeted advertising opportunities are emerging.
However, retail media requires a different approach than traditional digital advertising. Campaigns must be tailored to each retailer’s business needs and shopper behavior insights.
Follow these best practices when developing retail media campaigns to drive performance while advancing larger brand objectives:
Start with Audience
Traditional brand awareness media has focused on broadreach demographics and psychographics. Retail media is the opposite — it demands ultra-targeted audience segmentation.
The first step is identifying your core retail media audience based on actual purchase data and behaviors. Leverage the retailer’s first-party loyalty data through platforms like Kroger Precision Marketing. Combine it with your own CRM and customer data.
This allows brands to reach existing customers to re-engage them. You can also discover new high-value shopper profiles that buy your category but not yet your brand. Avoid the temptation to solely target heavy category buyers — look for incremental reach.
You may need to build custom audiences and segment them differently for each major retail media partner. A satisfied Walmart shopper may look very different from an Amazon Prime subscriber. Work with data experts to develop audiences tailored to each retail environment.
Have a Clear Objective
Too often brands jump into retail media without a sharp focus. Begin by defining one core objective and KPI — what specifically do you want retail media to achieve?
Typical objectives include:
- Drive sales/share within a retailer
- Reactivate lapsed buyers
- Increase margins by promoting premium items
- Grow overall market share against competitors
- Launch a new product
The objective then informs your audience targeting, messaging, creative strategy and measurement. Without a single-minded objective, retail media quickly loses direction.
Pick the Right Retail Media Formats
Each major retailer offers a suite of ad products and placements. Choose formats that make sense based on your objective, budget and audience:
- Paid search — Target by keywords as shoppers search for products. Great for demand fulfillment and new items.
- Product listing ads — Promote specific products on category and search pages. Drives discovery and conversions.
- Site display — Banners and video promote brand awareness and consideration. Best for upper-funnel.
- On-site recommendations — Highlights products on browse pages via sponsored category or cross-sells. Helps increase basket size.
- In-store digital — Digital displays and smart carts connect online and offline data. Builds awareness and reminders.
A campaign may layer several formats based on budget and strategy. Always pilot test new formats on a small scale first.
Create Relevant Content
Retail media allows much closer targeting than broader digital media. Use this to develop more relevant, customized creative assets and messaging.
Dynamic product listing ads can showcase the specific items you want to promote. Search and display ads can include tailored copy and offers for the retailer. Localized in-store digital reinforces your brand creatively on site.
Provide helpful information like nutritional benefits, ideal usage occasions and product highlights based on the audience. Avoid static brand-only creative — customize for the shopper, retailer and local store.
Continuously Optimize
View retail media optimization as a loop not a linear process. Continuously track performance, adjust levers, and monitor results.
Key metrics like clicks, added-to-cart rate, sales and ROAS reveal what’s resonating. Optimize against your campaign objective — don’t just blindly reduce cost per click.
Regularly review audience segments and expand or narrow targeting. Cycle creatives to identify best performers. Update bids, budgets and placements to balance spend and performance.
Optimization agility takes experience and learning and the right platform, this is where mimbi can help. Leverage retail media experts to interpret data, uncover insights and implement winning tweaks.
Align with In-Store Promotions
Though retail media helps influence online purchases, the reality is most CPG sales still happen in physical stores. That’s why it’s crucial to connect retail media with in-store promotions, displays and merchandising.
When running retail media campaigns, provide store reps with preview creatives and messaging so in-store activations reinforce the strategy. Feature the same products and offers online and in-store.
Geo-targeting digital ads to customers near specific stores running a promotion increases relevance. Retailers like Walmart even allow sponsored product campaigns to only promote items carried at a given store.
Omnichannel alignment ensures consistent messaging and maximizes campaign impact. It also strengthens collaboration between digital and in-store teams.
Measure Incremental Lift
At the end of the day, brands need to know their incremental return from retail media investment. Simple ROAS doesn’t provide the full picture.
Work with retailers that allow proper holdout groups for measurement. Tools like IRI Media Sales Effect and Nielsen’s Diameter help quantify lift vs. a pre-campaign baseline. You can even assess sales uplift for specific products promoted.
This incremental measurement is the true gauge of retail media effectiveness. It helps brands justify ongoing investment and expansion into new retailers. Don’t rely solely on seller-provided ROAS estimates without independent lift analysis.
Prove Out Channel-Wide Benefits
Limiting measurement to one retail media channel misses the bigger picture. Look for total sales impact across retailers — both online and in-store.
Increased retail media spend with Walmart should lift sales at Kroger and other banners if you gain overall market share. Uplift online from Amazon advertising may boost purchases at physical Target locations.
Conduct statistical modeling to estimate overall channel-wide lift from retail media. Survey shoppers exposed to retail media ads and track their purchases in-store. These techniques help quantify the true sales halo.
Financial modeling also demonstrates retail media’s bottom-line impact on marketing mix models. When allocated properly based on sales contribution, retail media will account for an increasing percentage of total media attribution.
Retail Media campaigns examples
Some of the most notable recent retail media campaigns have come from major CPG brands. For example, Procter & Gamble ran a campaign with Kroger around its Gain laundry detergent brand, using video and display ads to target households that were likely in the market for laundry detergent based on their purchase data. This campaign generated a strong return on ad spend by driving both new shoppers to try Gain as well as increased purchases among existing buyers. More about Kroger’s retail media offering.
Another top retail media campaign example is PepsiCo’s partnership with Albertsons on a summer sales promotion. Pepsi targeted Albertsons shoppers who had purchased its products before using sponsored product ads, banners, and other digital placements throughout Albertsons’ site and apps. This resulted in a 3% sales uplift for Pepsi during the promotional period. More: https://www.thecurrent.com/albertsons-closes-the-loop-between-ad-spend-and-sales
In addition to large CPG brands, retailers themselves often leverage their own retail media networks. Target ran a campaign promoting its Good & Gather private label brand across its owned channels using its Roundel ad platform. Featuring video and display ads, this campaign focused on awareness and consideration, driving increased purchase intent that led to sales lifts both online and in-store.
The Path Ahead
As retail media matures, pressure will increase for brands to invest at proven scales across major retailers. In turn, greater scrutiny will come on performance and attributable impact.
Following these best practices will help brands balance brand play with performance delivery through retail media. Those taking an omnichannel approach will pull ahead as silos disappear between digital and physical retail.
