Conquer, Scale and Thrive in Retail Media

2024 is the year when retail media has come of age. It is forecasted to reach $140 billion in global ad spending this year and is predicted to be the fastest-growing ad channel through 2027.

The reason for this growth? Retail media has something for everyone. For retailers, it opens more avenues to monetise data and properties. At the same time, for advertisers, retail media offers a ready pool of first-party consumer data along with detailed insights on products explored/bought, repeat orders and abandoned carts, a gold mine of data critical to tailoring high-performance ad campaigns.

While the promise of retail media is immense, there are some inherent challenges that both retailers and advertisers face in scaling their retail media strategies.

The rough spot

According to Epsilon’s Retail Media for Brands and Retailers report, 69% of brands and 71% of retailers find it difficult to develop or expand first-party data to scale their retail media campaigns. With omnichannel marketing becoming a norm and the value of third-party data declining, the challenge of first-party data becomes even more urgent to solve. However, with a large amount of data scattered across disparate platforms, ensuring centralised data management and a unified customer view takes a lot of work.

Privacy Matters

Data leakage and privacy are the other key challenges common to both stakeholders. The challenge of balancing data security and compliance can undermine the effectiveness of retail media efforts, making it crucial for both parties to implement strong data protection measures and clear privacy protocols to enhance customer engagement and loyalty.

Partnering for Progress

About 74% of global retailers find it difficult to develop a robust retail media strategy due to the spiralling cost of new technology, lack of skilled workforce and difficulties in collaboration with partners. Strong partnerships, especially with self-service solution providers, can help retailers access the most advanced technologies at lower costs and sustain even with limited resources.

Personalising Experiences

Data-driven personalised experiences form the core of retail media experiences. Often, retailers fail to synchronise data, which may lead to inconsistent or conflicting messaging across channels and adversely impact customer experiences. To avoid this, retailers must ensure their data is leveraged precisely and securely for personalised customer journeys.

Retail Media Solutions: Scale Up, Stand Out

• Proactive data collection strategies: Brands and retailers should aim to enhance data collection by engaging customers with interactive content like polls, quizzes, and feedback loops. They can also offer discounts and exclusive offers to incentivise customers to share quality data further.
• Enriching first-party data: To acquire a more thorough grasp of their target market, brands and retailers should seek a data partner that enables data sharing and enriches first-party data with deeper insights and maps more transactions to real shoppers for better attribution and targeting.
• Identity Resolution for a Unified Shopper View: Connecting fragmented customer data from different channels into a single, unified customer identity can help unravel a new world of untapped opportunities. It can empower retailers and advertisers to identify what works best for their target audiences and connect with them when and where they need the most.
• Precision Targeting based on analytics and AI-insights: To keep pace with evolving consumer buying patterns, behaviour, and preferences, it is important to incorporate agile methodologies and continuous data update to increase targeting accuracy, avoid ad wastage and maximise ROAS.

Person-First, Results-Driven

To navigate retail media complexities, retailers and advertisers need solutions that are easy to integrate with their existing tech stack, save them from hiring additional resources or training existing teams and drive incremental returns on their ad spend.

Epsilon Retail Media is an all-inclusive, connected platform that offers retailers and advertisers a suite of person-first solutions to understand their core shoppers better, personalise experiences and engage more meaningfully on the retailer properties and across the open web.

• Adapting Targeting Strategies: The platform leverages AI and advanced analytics to adapt targeting strategies based on evolving consumer behaviour. This agility ensures that marketing efforts remain relevant and effective, driving engagement and conversions. Continuously analysing data can help to refine the campaign approach, making it easier to connect with high-intent audiences when they want to.
• Unified Attribution Across Channels: The platform enables unified attribution across onsite and offsite channels. Retailers and marketers can track and understand customer interactions across the journey, from initial awareness to final purchase. By integrating all touchpoints into a cohesive strategy, retailers and advertisers see which efforts drive results and allocate resources more effectively.
• Personalisation at Scale: By leveraging first-party data and a unified customer view, retailers and advertisers can leverage Epsilon Retail Media to create and publish highly personalised ads on the retailer website and across the open web and Connected TV through multiple formats like display or video ads.