“In terms of untapped space, I think digital in-store is the biggest opportunity right now,” said Erin Houg, VP of media at Ulta Beauty. 

Houg and other executives scheduled to speak at Brand Innovators’ Evolution of Commerce Summit shared their concerns and challenges, and what they see as the biggest opportunities to tackle these issues. The summit, scheduled to take place in New York May 15, comes at a fraught time for retail, when the threat of trade wards threatens operations, and uncertainty around the economy is reflected in volatile sales figures. 

Retail media networks offer a beneficial opportunity for merchants to monetize their data, relationships and sales floor, either in real life or virtually. Houg noted Ulta is growing its UB Media network by running a pilot of CTV and streaming audio in the second quarter and is also piloting a luxury private marketplace to leverage its data to serve brand advertising in relevant premium sites. 

The RMNs, still a growing medium, are increasingly widening their scope to target consumers across a more complex journey that can cut across platforms, and both online and off-line shopping.

“Consumers no longer follow a traditional purchase funnel, but blend physical and digital experiences throughout their journey,” said Suzanne Skop, head of agency partnerships at Instacart. She noted this is demonstrated in data collected in the online grocer’s smart Caper Carts, which show shoppers clipping digital coupons in-store, and spending more time shopping for larger orders.

“Success is when both consumers and brands win, regardless of where the purchase happens,” said Skop.

Lauren Griewski, head of sales and partnerships at Chase Media Solutions, noted Chase takes a holistic view to identify how customers shop across the entire marketplace, not just its own network, so it can accurately measure the impact of a campaign on incremental sales. As a financial services provider, Chase has the advantage of strict data security and spending data across the marketplace. 

“Because we’re with our customers during key moments in their lives—whether they’re buying a home or booking a vacation—we have a deep understanding of their spending habits,” she said. “This allows us to help brands deliver personalized and contextually relevant offers to an engaged audience through our brand-safe channels, ultimately leading to increased spend and higher returns.”

Measurement as a superpower

Measurement and attribution are often mentioned by retailers as a continuing challenge to RMNs’ growth. Standard metrics and measurements remain elusive, while many retailers and RMNs are working with partners to provide more accurate and relevant measurement.

“The biggest challenge I see is the need to standardize measurement and provide a more apples-to-apples comparison against broader media executions,” said Matt Fantazier, head of integrated media at Kenvue, a spinoff of Johnson & Johnson, that handles brands such as Tylenol, Band-Aid, Listerine and Neutrogena. “As we look to leverage retailer data and capabilities to grow our brands, not just inside of their walls but across the marketplace, this level of standardization and transparency will be critical.”

Data and measurement are “the superpower for RMNs,” said Fantazier.  They are also the biggest opportunity to develop, according to many retail experts. 

“Our biggest measurement challenge is tracking how people actually shop today, jumping between phones, computers, and stores in unpredictable patterns. We need attribution models that connect these dots accurately,” said Skop. “The industry is moving toward unified standards that combine traditional metrics with retail media innovations to give a complete picture.”

In an environment where shoppers increasingly cross channels and even platforms in a much more complex consumer journey, RMN’s have responded by building partnerships and tools that allow brands to gauge much more exactly how their investments in these media channels are performing. 

“The biggest opportunity is extending retail media beyond the point of purchase to the entire consumer journey,” said Skop. “Our partnerships with Google, Meta, NBCUniversal, The Trade Desk, and Roku show how we’re applying the same targeting precision and measurement clarity across the full shopping experience – not just at checkout.”

Retailers are also enhancing the creative output and innovating their messages to offer brands an enhanced opportunity to gain the consumers’ attention in a crowded marketplace.

“I’m really excited about the opportunity to deliver more in the brand-building and strategic thought leadership spaces,” said Houg. “I believe retail media networks have a higher level of responsibility to drive success for our advertisers and be strong business partners.”

Houg noted UB Media plans to introduce more opportunities with social influencers and digital in-store advertising “all designed to enhance brand visibility and guest interaction across diverse media landscapes.”

An omnichannel focus is table stakes now, according to retailers. 

“We’ve expanded our advertising beyond the point of purchase because consumers expect personalization everywhere, whether they’re shopping online, using our smart carts in-store, or ordering through Uber Eats,” said Skop. “Our focus is on creating relevant and complementary product discovery tailored to what customers actually need.”

The post Retail media networks face growth challenges appeared first on Brand Innovators.

The partnership is an extension of earlier collaborations between NBCUniversal, Walmart and Walmart Connect that included the launch of NBCU’s Must Shop TV. According to the companies, the three entities have continued to work together on live sports programming, finding that it has a significant impact over standard CTV advertising.

“By teaming up with the powerhouse of Walmart and Walmart Connect, we’re differentiating the viewer experience with a first-of-its-kind shoppable activation while also amplifying real, cross-platform accountability for marketers on one of our biggest stages,” said Alison Levin, President, Advertising & Partnerships, NBCUniversal, in a statement. “This is the next era of advertising – the most compelling content, an innovative viewer experience and real, cross-platform reach and attribution.”  

In addition to the shoppable content, Walmart will also run a two-minute segment from its new advertising campaign, “Dreams of Desire,”  showcasing the retailer’s biggest holiday deals. According to the company’s research, 86% of the retailer’s customers report watching professional football, making the Thanksgiving weekend coverage an optimal time to reach the target market. 

In addition to the Walmart collaboration, NBCUniversal will work with several brands on additional programming opportunities throughout the holiday season. For instance, the media company will expand its successful Virtual Concessions home shopping feature from the Paris Olympics to its Christmas in Rockefeller Center program. 

Baileys will also return to the Christmas in Rockefeller Center program, sponsoring the show’s countdown clock and hosting the first-ever televised watch party at 61 Loft & Garden in New York City. 

Toyota will be the first presenting sponsor of Telemundo’s broadcast of “Navidades en Rockefeller Center” with a commercial called “Naughty List” and a reveal of a partnership with Best Friends Animal Society, which works to help save the lives of dogs and cats in America’s shelters. 

Elsewhere in its programming:

• Turkey brand Jennie-O is partnering with The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to contribute 15,000 frozen turkeys and 1,000 Hormel hams to the Food Bank of NYC. Crumbl Cookies will also partner with the show to showcase a special Jimmy Fallon’s Holiday Seasoning Candy Cane Brownie to be available in the chain’s stores from December 2 through 7. 
• Rao’s Homemade sauces will offer a social-first behind-the-scenes look at the first float, which will be appearing in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, airing on NBC and Peacock.
• Shark Cordless PowerDetect vacuums will partner with the National Dog Show Presented by Purina, also airing on NBC and Peacock on Nov. 28. 
• Starbucks and The Kelly Clarkson Show also premiered a new segment, “Starbucks  City Seats,” where fans sit and converse with the popular daytime host over a complementary holiday beverage while she is in the studio.  

“The holidays at NBCUniversal are one of the most highly anticipated times of year for fans and brands with iconic programming that engages viewers of all ages,” said

Karen Kovacs, President, Advertising & Partnership, NBCUniversal, in a release. “And this year we are elevating our holiday programming through cross-platform partnerships with some of the nation’s top brands to transform the holiday season into one of the most powerful platforms for engagement, delivering memorable experiences that resonate with viewers and maximize impact for marketers.” 

The post NBCU, Walmart team up for shoppable experience appeared first on Brand Innovators.

Retail media networks are no longer the domain of merchants who want to leverage shopper data and real-world locations to sell in-store advertising. Travel companies—hotel chains, airlines and even the ride-share companies—are leveraging their rich data from guests and connections with other verticals to offer brands an opportunity for personalized, contextual advertising at scale in a post-cookie world. 

“The retail media space is exciting for a number of reasons,” said Matt Wurst, CMO of Genuin, a video provider that works with many brands and networks. For travel companies, he explained, these networks offer an opportunity to monetize their owned media platforms by connecting brands with their audience. And in addition to creating a revenue stream, the platforms also drive user engagement and time on site, which drives return on investment and other key performance indicators, said Wurst: “The audience is there, they are receptive, and it’s a contextually relevant play where everyone wins.” 

Retail advertising is on the rise, with spending in the segment expected to grow about 30% in 2024. The increase is powered largely by these networks, and their programmatic offerings, which are expected to rake in $20 billion in spending, up from $7.5 billion in 2023. There is obviously a lot of money to be made; during a conference call with analysts last year, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company expects to make $1 billion in revenue from advertising in 2024. 

Travel companies have taken that lesson to heart. Marriott became the first hospitality company to launch a retail media network, with the introduction of Marriott Media Network in 2022. The same year, Uber launched Journey Ads and rival Lyft introduced Lyft Media.  And the ranks of travel RMNs keep growing. United Airlines took to the stage during the recent Cannes Lions festival to introduce its new retail media network, Kinective Media. And travel platform Expedia launched Expedia Group Media Solutions during its annual conference in May. 

Retail advertising has come a long way from the days of in-store displays and banner ads on e-commerce sites. McKinsey estimated the sector could grow to $100 billion in ad spending by 2026 and this new breed of commerce media now includes shoppable ads, addressable TV and many other channels. And as McKinsey’s analysts noted: “The first-party data and customer touchpoints owned by hospitality brands, travel and hotel providers… may also lend themselves to contextual advertising that consumers opt into in return for more relevant, tailored experiences.”

The travel companies are setting sail into a marketplace that is becoming more competitive. Home Depot, an established player that launched its RMN in 2018, recently rebranded it as Orange Apron Media and hosted what it called an InFront presentation for media buyers modeled after the TV upfronts, to attract more advertiser dollars; and companies in other verticals, such as JP Morgan Chase, have also entered the fray recently. 

Retail media networks have gained popularity in recent years as merchants benefit from offering scale to advertisers, leveraging the media they own via their real-life locations and their e-commerce portals. Expedia has more than 20 years’ experience publishing more than 200 websites in over 70 countries, which makes it “no stranger to travel publishing,” said Angelique Miller, VP, Media Studio, at Expedia Group Media Solutions. Richard Nunn, CEO of MileagePlus noted United flew 145 million people in 2023 and it was already serving up ads on its in-flight screens. “We were already doing this in reality,” before launching Kinective, he said. 

And the audience travel networks can deliver is a desirable one. As Khosrowshahi told the financial analysts, Journey Ads offers “a very, very high end customer” to advertisers and boasted that engagement in Journey Ads is high, with 3% click through rates. 

Data advantages, educational challenges 

The travel companies are in a strong position to compete for ad dollars, because they have rich stores of data that offer insight into consumers, gathered through their loyalty programs. United’s MileagePlus has nearly 40 million members worldwide; Marriott’s Bonvoy has over 196 million. “Obviously, we’re sitting on a bunch of data,” said Nunn, noting that the data is high-quality and verified, since traveler information has to be accurate for a passenger to get on a plane. 

“A shift to a cookieless world will make it much harder for brands to track and target travelers as they move through what has become a very complex journey,” said Miller.  A company like Expedia, which is less reliant on third-party data, can reduce the impact of cookie deprecation, especially at a time when the path to purchase is such a fragmented journey, she said. 

“With a shift in how people are seeking inspiration, searching for, and booking travel, we continue to adapt and innovate on behalf of our partners to match these shifts,” Miller said. She noted that Expedia research has found the average traveler goes through 141 pages of travel-related content over 45 days before travel. “This fragmentation teaches us all that it’s more important than ever to meet the customers where they are,” she said. By using data to understand their habits and preferences, brands can make better decisions, she explained. 

By connecting travel data, dwell times—those stretches of time spent waiting for a flight or traveling between airport and hotel, can be transformed into an opportunity, said Nunn. While an arrival delay can be a pain point for a traveler, an advertiser can step in with information that is useful in context—offering a traveler who’s renting a house the opportunity to order a grocery delivery in advance, for example. 

And while destinations and other travel-related advertisers are making wide use of travel RMNs, other types of brands can also benefit from the contextual advantage. Nunn noted Kinective’s launch clients included both travel companies, but also brands such as Chase and Macy’s. 

“I think the opportunity of this whole media network first-party opportunity is how we collaborate and not compete. That is where the publisher side has fallen down in recent years,” Nunn said. He noted that for many brands, additional media spend is being swept into the same social media and search portals they have always used, when RMNs offer a better targeted opportunity. 

The data-driven approach and the sharing of data open up some concerns about privacy and sharing proprietary information. As Miller explained: “data protection is a big consideration for anyone who is working in this space.” Many RMNs rely on data “clean rooms” that allow brands to collaborate while protecting data privacy.   

The travel companies also have to shift their perception of what they can do to accommodate different partnerships. Nunn noted United has run tests with LiveNation and TicketMaster to serve ticket offers to travelers based on their destinations.

Understanding the various audiences that have to be involved when connecting media properties could be the biggest challenge to an RMN, said Nunn. “We’re an airline. Many of these networks were set up by retailers,” he said. Launching Kinctive required an education effort to “communicate the value of the data and the asset we’re sitting on,” he said. “We had to say: why us?” 

RMNs give travel companies the opportunity to turn their loyalty programs from a cost center into a revenue opportunity, as well as monetizing their websites, digital displays and other owned media channels, said Genuin’s Wurst:  It’s really an opportunity to reclaim ownership of not just the data, but of content, of community experiences and the relationship with the consumer.” 

The post Latest destination for travel brands: Retail Media Networks appeared first on Brand Innovators.

Albertsons has a goal to “create a magical customer-centric digital ecosystem” by using intuitive digital tools that simplify the shopping process and offer more personalized and well-being suggestions for how to eat, live and feel better,” says Francisco Bram, vice president of marketing & customer insights, Albertsons Companies. 

“Customers are now getting more familiar with personalization, convenience, and dynamic pricing,” he adds. “The next six months grocery retailers are going to be reevaluating their investments in technology, focusing on digital transformation, enhancing expanding private label products.”

The retail chain recently launched a tool that allows them to look at a customer’s entire shopping history with Albertsons and connect that information back to USDA MyPlate guidelines. With this data, the company can then let them know if they are under or over indexing on protein, fruits, veggies, and then recommend the necessary steps for the individual to improve their overall nutrition. “It’s completely free. We’re just leveraging data to enhance that customer journey and show customers we truly care about their health and well-being,” explains Bram. “Retailers will use customer data more and more to enhance customer experiences.”

Prior to joining Albertsons about three years ago, Bram held senior marketing roles at Uber and Siemens. Brand Innovators caught up with Bram from his office in the San Francisco Bay Area to discuss retail media networks, earning grocery points for exercising and how growing up on a farm in Portugal has helped shape his approach to leadership. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How are we thinking about digital transformation? 

It’s really the path we charted to help build customers for life. Our strategy was when I first joined, almost three years ago, how do we seamlessly integrate digital technology into the various customer journeys that we identified? For example, we know customers are looking for convenience and inspiration for what to eat. They’re also looking for what to buy that aligns with their health and well-being goals. Our goal is to connect these different journeys together through digital technology, and also enhance the offline and online experience with our brands.

How are you building loyalty with customers?

I’ve learned that a grocery customer shops up to five different grocery store brands on average. They look for what’s most convenient, cost-effective and rewards. In order to build customer loyalty, we have to find customers where they’re at and remove a little bit of the perception that grocery shopping is just about filling and stocking up your pantry. It’s just a chore. We started running a lot of customer research studies and learned that an average person thinks about food 226 times a day. It’s a lot of cognitive load created just by thinking about food. It’s about how they eat it, how to cook it, how to plan the meal. It’s also about  what’s healthy for you. And if you’re the primary shopper, what’s healthy for your household?

It was important that we start to build programs that give customers delightful moments as they interact with us so that they feel like they would be missing out on something if they decide to go somewhere else just because it’s closer. 

For instance, we launched a platform that contains over 9,000 proprietary free recipes. A customer can determine that they want to shop for recipes that are vegan friendly or they don’t have peanuts and we can populate those recipes personalized to your health and well-being goals. And it’s all shoppable so you can with one click add all the ingredients to your cart and use flash delivery, which means we can deliver all the ingredients within 30 minutes with step-by-step instructions on how to cook it. 

How are you supporting consumers as they navigate inflation and deal with tighter budgets?

We are acutely aware of the financial pressures customers face. We think about ways to make grocery shopping not just magical, but also so that it doesn’t break the wallet. We partner closely with CPG brands to offer discounts on products. In our app, we have a deals section. It’s the most visited section in our entire digital experience. Customers can find coupons that they can clip automatically to their wallet so that at checkout, all these discounts can apply automatically.

The other way we also offer ways to save is through continuously expanding our own private label products. We have a lot of healthy, fresh, own brand products and we’re constantly launching new SKUs. Not only are they high quality, but they come at a lower price. 

Finally, we’ve built ways for customers to make healthier choices, earn for being more active and in exchange to save on their grocery bill. For example, with the launch of Sincerely Health, we allow customers to make better, more informed decisions in terms of what to buy that aligns with their health and well-being goals. You can set up a goal like, “I want to walk 10,000 steps” and you can connect the device to our Apple Watch in our app. Once you accomplish this 10,000 steps you would earn discounts on grocery products. 

How are you working with brands in your retail media network?

Our Albertsons Media Collective is our arm that works with brands. Their goal is to thoughtfully integrate digital advertising to enhance, not disrupt the shopping experience. If I’m already buying with you, I want to see ads. We’ve actually learned that customers do enjoy advertising as long as advertising is contextually relevant to that customer journey.

If I’m buying produce and you’re featuring a specific ad for avocados, that is compelling and enhances my journey versus, of course, featuring an advertisement for something completely unrelated to my journey. The goal is to partner with brands and insert those brand ad experiences into these different journeys, not just the one size tall, but personalize it to those journeys. How do we make advertising more of a customer enhancement versus a distraction? Our partnerships are really designed to deliver mutual value, delivering CPG brand visibility.

We have 39 million loyalty customers who engage with our brand frequently. We support 55 million households. And so we have an opportunity to add visibility to CPG brands but we believe the most impactful way to do so is by offering customer deals and products aligned with their momentary experience and customer journey. We are trying to strike that balance between giving brands the visibility they need while offering customers products that are relevant to them. 

What is your approach to leadership?

I grew up on a small farm in Portugal and my grandfather was an agricultural engineer. The most delightful moments of my childhood were spent cultivating the fields. I took that as a lifestyle approach for myself. I’m a cultivator at heart. I love to approach leadership with care and dedication, just like a gardener would nurture the garden. So to nurture my team, my brand, my customers the same way. that means, paying attention to the details, being consistent in the delivery of our goals, and being very transparent about how our goals are delivered. Also, create a purpose. When you’re cultivating a garden, the purpose is to see it flourish. So I empower my team with clear objectives, connecting them back to a purpose.

For example, we’re launching Sincerely Health, a platform to allow customers to live healthier. And one of our goals would be to measure how many customers have actually improved their health score since the launch. that creates meaning that creates excitement. It keeps us in touch with customer needs. It’s really important to always emphasize why we’re doing it. I also believe that success is not an overnight creation, just like cultivating a garden, it’s a series of small consistent steps that would lead to great leaps. I like to nurture a culture where we celebrate small wins, where there’s kindness, we drive for growth, while at the same time, keeping the customers as the North Star.

Are there any other career positions that you’ve held that help give you perspective for this current role? 

At Uber, it is a culture where we move fast. And we use data to inform decisions. But the way to get data is not to sit around and hope that data comes to us. It’s about learning and experimentation and extracting insights from. That was really something I took with me when I came to this role. Albertsons is a retailer, it’s been around for a long time and so I brought in some of that learning experimentation mindset. It is okay to fail and take risks, as long as we learn from these, and we build playbooks for the future. And so many of the tools and technologies and even campaigns that we ran were experiments.

We were constantly testing out new ways to reach customers and new ways to connect with customers at a deeper level. Sometimes it’s a home run, sometimes it’s not but that’s part of the experience. Creating that culture where people feel empowered to take risks is really important. 

The post Innovator Interviews: Albertsons’ Francisco Bram appeared first on Brand Innovators.

Retail media has become one of hottest channels for marketing over the past few years, as companies such as Target, Amazon, Instacart and Ebay use their captive checkout audiences and extensive first-party data to lure customers right at the point-of-purchase. With an average of 3.5 hours of captive screen time per flight and nearly 100 million app sessions per month – as well as insights into travelers – United sees an opportunity to get in on the action.

“Unlike some commerce media platforms, United gives brands across a wide range of industries the ability to reach engaged customers throughout the entire marketing funnel – from brand consideration to conversion – in a way that’s highly personalized and relevant, and we’re already seeing impressive results,” said Richard Nunn, CEO of MileagePlus, in a statement. “There has been a huge strategic shift within this high growth sector in the past five years where advertisers and brands have come together to determine how best to connect with consumers in a way that’s valuable, effective and personalized.”

United sees particular appeal for companies in the retail, luxury goods, financial services, media and travel categories. United said it will anonymize the data collected to feed Kinective Media and that consumers can opt out of having their data used for the system at any time.

In its recent “Future of Digital Commerce” report, WARC projected global marketing investments in retail media would grow 13.7% to reach $153.3 billion this year, based on the channels increased sophistication in leveraging data for offsite campaigns. The research firm projected a slowdown next year, however, as advertisers reach the limits of their budgets.

The post United launches sky-high retail media network appeared first on Brand Innovators.