Out-of-home: How brands can harness the full power of retail media with DOOH

In this piece, I explore some of the most popular use cases for offline retail media in today’s media mix.

A modern approach to retail media

For decades – long before online shopping was possible – physical retail media has been a key commercial tactic used by supermarkets to maximize in-store revenue. Thanks to significant advances in data science and technology, store media is no longer the untargeted, linear medium that it once was. It is now a precision buy, with real-time optimization possible, and closed-loop measurement capabilities. This nuanced, measurable channel can be highly tailored to meet specific objectives including:

• The ability to reach large numbers of customers who are already looking to make a purchase
• Prompting impulse buys, or encouraging customers to switch
• Calling out pricing, promotions, offers, and other incentives
• Educating customers about products, particularly newly launched items
• Linking back to wider brand building activities
• Opportunity to tap into timely moments such as weather or sports results

The introduction of programmatic buying capabilities means that supermarket-based DOOH can now be bought alongside all other programmatic channels from a demand-side platform.

The challenge for brands and agencies is how to ensure that online and offline retail media work together to drive incremental performance while also maintaining a strategic balance across their entire media mix.

Position your brand at the final opportunity to influence purchase decisions

Perhaps the most obvious use case, but supermarket advertising offers advertisers highly influential placements outside stores. JCDecaux UK enables brands to reach and engage Tesco and Waitrose shoppers at a combined 600 locations across the UK moments before purchase decisions are made. By intercepting consumers at this key moment, brands can achieve a variety of objectives from increasing awareness to, ultimately, driving sales.

The premium 75” digital 6-sheet screens located directly outside Tesco and Waitrose stores provide maximum visibility and flexibility for brands to engage consumers with their most up-to-date messaging and content.

Supermarket DOOH can play a pivotal role when launching new products, enabling brands to drive awareness and sales, especially in highly competitive FMCG sectors. Using exclusive dunnhumby data, JCDecaux UK can guide brands as to which stores over-index against specific categories and audiences for precision targeting. Previous research has shown this approach can drive an uplift in sales of around 15%, and that optimizing in-flight using sales data can provide a further boost upwards of 10%.

Going beyond shopper audiences

Retail media enables advertisers to tap into a variety of audiences – not just grocery shoppers – although that is a very popular objective. Through our data partnerships with Experian, YouGov, AdSquare, and Local Retail Spend (provided by CACI), JCDecaux UK enables non-FMCG advertisers to use supermarket DOOH to tap into shopper audiences and reach incremental audiences.

The flexibility of our digital screens allows you to tailor your campaign message to target individual stores by their specific location, use different creatives throughout the day or highlight specific promotions. Plus, the unmissable location of the screens outside supermarkets gives you maximum visibility and viewability.

Supermarkets are considered to be brand-safe and trusted environments located in the center of the community. There's no such thing as ad-block for advertising at grocery stores, and you don't have to worry about your ad being placed on an unfriendly website (potentially deterring new or existing customers). Plus, advertisers can use location data to add contextual relevance to their messaging at a granular level. All these factors make supermarket advertising a very attractive option for those outside the retail sector.

A multichannel media approach

In recent years, I’ve seen a definite tendency towards viewing retail media as a solely digital opportunity. That’s frustrating, because the physical store still plays a vital role, especially when it comes to generating reach at scale. But this isn’t about choosing between physical or digital it’s about intelligently using a channel that has the capability of reaching millions of customers each month. Whoever your target audience may be, odds are you can easily reach them at the supermarket.

Multi-channel strategies not only deliver better results for FMCG advertisers, they can also supercharge any advertiser’s messaging. Customers exposed to multiple channels tend to spend more with a retailer than others and research shows that customers who are exposed to four different channels convert 3.8x more compared to those who are exposed to just one channel. Furthermore, consumers at supermarkets are also arguably less likely to be distracted by other screens compared to say when they are watching TV with their mobile phone close by.

Programmatic: frictionless access to inventory

As I mentioned earlier, programmatic capabilities in DOOH means that anyone buying advertising through a demand-side platform (DSP) can now tap into DOOH alongside other programmatic channels. This is a great option for brands that are also investing in online retail media as it provides a single, self-serve access point for all channels, making booking and planning multi-channel campaigns straightforward.

It also helps to protect buyers from some of the negative effects of complexity such as fragmented reporting and potential over-exposure to advertising. Furthermore, if you bake in the right data integrations, you can connect first-party data from your CRM to your advertising campaigns for enhanced targeting and personalization.

The untapped opportunity

While it’s impossible to quantify, I truly believe that there is an untapped opportunity out there for brands that can master a holistic approach to retail media that encompasses both online and offline channels. By virtue of a closed loop that links a shopper’s media exposure and their purchasing behaviors, retail media makes it far easier to demonstrate ROAS than many other forms of marketing.

Regardless of the channel, retail media is the perfect platform for brands to influence and engage with millions of shoppers in the mind-set to purchase as well as having wider (meaningful and definable) interests. I have no doubt that online retail media will continue to flourish and attract a lot of ad spend. However, it is my belief that retail media budgets should be split appropriately between online and offline, and that the two should be bought holistically to maximize success.

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