How rising measurement standards are boosting retail media

Advertisers are attracted increasingly by this combination of digital and physical media inventory, and by the targeting, optimization and measurement attributes of retail media. As a result, global spend in the space is expected to reach $170bn by 2027.

To discuss these opportunities and the ability to measure the impact of retail media activity, Ian Gibbs, director of insight and planning at the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) hosted a panel with leaders from Criteo, Kimberly-Clark, ISBA and Deliveroo Advertising.

Catch up on the full session here.

The demise of third-party cookie data has led advertisers to seek alternative ways to target consumers – which throws up issues around measurement. Bobi Carley, head of media and diversity and inclusion lead at ISBA, says: “The ask is being able to compare other media because, at the moment, retail media is still seen as slightly separate. Ultimately, it will be another line on the media plan but if that’s the case it will need to meet similar standards.”

But, Carley notes, there’s an upside here in that retail media practitioners can learn from mistakes made in other areas of the media industry, and “leapfrog” existing approaches when it comes to measurement and delivering transparency to brands.

The discussion focused initially on the strong ROI and sales conversion metrics provided by retail media across channels and through various stages of the marketing funnel, with Nicole Kivel, managing director, Northern Europe, at Criteo, adding that its impact on brand awareness can also be tracked.

“There's the capability today to activate a brand-building campaign, whether it’s through video content, open web or CTV,” she says. “All of that can be powered by a retail audience and with that you know the shopper behavior. For example, we know this is an audience of moms with children under the age of five based on their purchase patterns. So we’re able to target them with the brand-building for whatever product makes sense.”

It’s important to adopt a test and learn approach when it comes to measuring the impact of retail media spend, says Christof Baer, head of performance marketing at Kimberly-Clark, noting that Kimberly-Clark can demonstrate these results within the business on a quarterly basis. “There's more to come, and hopefully more innovation to help us to navigate the complexity and ultimately be accountable to our CFO,” he adds.

A further strength of retail media relates to the issue of the decline of third-party cookies, and potential damage to brand attribution models – but this is less of a problem in this space as there is plentiful access to first-party data, says Criteo’s Kivel.

In terms of what comes next for retail media measurement, Alex Prouhet, global director of commercial and operations at Deliveroo Advertising, says: “I'm excited about the future where we can drive these off-platform, awareness-driving campaigns. Where we were traditionally driving performance... we can then drive them [consumers] to retail media platforms where we can really understand what the interplay is, what the incrementality is, and ultimately understand multi-touchpoint attribution and how that feeds into larger mixed models.”

Further innovation from businesses such as Criteo is on the way too. This is expected to enable the execution of campaigns with increasingly accurate targeting of specific audiences, and to empower brands in categories beyond FMCG, such as fashion, to more fully utilize retail media.

These developments will in turn fuel advances in measurement and format standardization to enable advertisers to attribute the impact of their spend in greater detail. If that’s the case, then the rapid growth forecasts for retail media will be realized and even surpassed.

Watch the full panel discussion on ‘Measuring retail ad effectiveness’ here on The Drum TV.