What is Retail Media Advertising?
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What is Retail Media?
What, exactly, is retail media? And why is it trending right now? Learn three reasons why retail media is on the rise.
What is retail media advertising?
Retail media advertising refers to ads placed within retailer’s sites or apps. It allows brands that sell products directly through the retailer, promote their visibility on the “digital shelf,” similar to product placements in physical stores, to influence consumers at the point of purchase. The primary goal of retail media is to influence consumers at key points of their purchasing journey, boosting product visibility and driving sales. Major platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and Target are leading the way in this growing form of advertising, allowing brands to engage shoppers right at the digital point of purchase.
Types of Retail Media Ads
Retail advertising can be shown on the home page, category page, search results page, or product detail page to reach consumers at various stages of their journey. Some retail media solutions also enable brands to retarget retailers’ audiences as they browse the open web, referred to as offsite retail media.
On-site Sponsored Products: These ads appear natively within organic search results but have a “Sponsored” label. They are lower-funnel tactics aimed at capturing attention at the point of purchase to drive conversions.
On-site Display: These ads mimic traditional digital display ads and can appear in high-visibility placements such as homepages, category pages, and product detail pages. They are mid-funnel tactics meant to engage shoppers and encourage product consideration.
Off-site Display: These ads target shoppers who have previously visited a retailer’s site but did not make a purchase. They aim to bring shoppers back to the retailer’s site to complete their purchase.
Why is retail media advertising hot right now?
Retail media was already trending for three reasons:
Ecommerce is a retail media driver. Consumers are shifting their purchases from physical stores to ecommerce in increasing numbers. Brands want to make sure they’re where the action is, and reaching high-intent shoppers at the point of sale on the sites and apps of their retail partners.
Post-cookies, the need for personalized advertising continues. For personalized advertising to carry on once third-party cookies are deprecated, advertisers need to rely on first-party data.
Retail media ties media spend to sales. The attribution capabilities of retail media are extremely attractive to brands who are increasingly looking to connect their ad spend directly to sales.
Why shift to online retail advertising?
Advertisers are under pressure to prove the impact of their efforts on the bottom line. At the same time, privacy and industry changes are making it more difficult to effectively engage audiences. Retail media is a strategy that enables them to reach privacy-safe, high-intent audiences today. It also provides closed-loop measurement, making it easy for advertisers to tie ad spend to actual sales.
To get started with your own retail media campaign, explore our Commerce Max solution.