In retail media we trust
Trust is one of the most important assets when you sell ads.
Based on a Forbes study in 2020, almost half of the advertisers don’t trust at least 20% of the data they use to make media buying decisions and 74% of advertisers would increase their ad spending by as much as 50% if they had access to more transparent data.
This concern also applies to retail media.
In a recent McKinsey article that was published last summer based on surveys of advertisers, one conclusion was this: “Robust reporting and measurement capabilities, therefore, are assets for retailers seeking to deliver higher performance and new insights. Before committing or increasing their investment with retailers, advertisers will want to know these capabilities are in place.”
The best tool to earn trust is to be transparent.
Retail media has 2 virtues in that sense: (a) It can be fully transparent (the store has first party data including direct and indirect sales for each product that is promoted by a brand or a seller) and (b) It gets the best performance compared to any other media out there (because the ad appears in front of the shopper when they are in the store and ready to buy) so there is nothing to hide. The survey that was conducted by McKinsey found that nearly 70 percent of advertisers say their performance in retail media is significantly or somewhat better than in other channels.
So what exactly does it mean to be transparent?
It means that you share as much data as possible with your advertisers.
You share all the campaign performance data, the number of ad impressions, clicks, conversions, ROAS of each product that they are promoting. If there was an order following a click on their ad, show the order ID.
Share any data that can help them improve and optimize their campaign such as their CPC, the average winning bid, the performance of the keywords they are using, the volume of these keywords etc.
But it also means that you promise them a fair playing field. A clean, equal to all environment where they compete fairly with other advertisers under the same rules. No manual manipulations to push some advertisers or sellers, No saved slots for associates. May the best product win.
If advertisers feel that there are some advertisers not playing by the same rules and getting preferred deal or that the playing field isn’t fair and transparent, you will lose their trust.
The way to avoid it is to offer your sellers and brand partners a reliable, transparent and open-to-all real time bidding auction-based advertising platform.
If you want to give some advertisers a bonus you can do that and give them free credits to use in a campaign, but their campaign will compete like any other campaign under the same rules as all the others.
It will also help prevent cases where an advertiser puts pressure on the store’s salespeople to get better positions for their product ads or try to cut unfair or corrupt deals.
In an article that was published just a few months ago in Digiday with the title “As retailers sell more ads, marketers’ frustrations and fears grow”, they mentioned that while brand appreciate retail media’s stronger attribution data and brand-safety, many retailers jumped on the retail media bandwagon with a patchy solution without “the types of real-time reporting and self-service functions that marketers are accustomed to on digitally native platforms”.
So, whether you are just taking your first steps in retail media or already running a RMN business, in order to scale make sure that what you’re offering to your sellers and brand partners is transparent and fair.
About Mabaya
Mabaya, a Criteo company, offers a white-label self-service retail media platform for online retailers and marketplaces that enables sellers and brands to bid in order to ensure their products are listed in premium locations in the online store.
The platform is integrated in more than 50 ecommerce sites around the globe (such as Bol.com, Jumia, Manomano, Kaufland, Falabella etc.), serving more than 80,000 advertisers and sellers.
