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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
Trip Report: Retail & Commerce Media Activations in Poland
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[00:00:00] Kiri Masters: There was only one word that I could reliably pronounce after a week in Poland, Żabka. Polish is a particularly unforgiving language for an [00:00:15] outsider, and since most people that I interacted with while I was there spoke perfect English, I didn't have much of an opportunity to really practice. Żabka, on the other hand, was on nearly every corner.
[00:00:29] [00:00:30] Żabka is a convenience chain. Think of something like a 7-Eleven, but closer to the Japanese type of 7-Eleven, where they have pre-prepared food and hot food that's actually worth eating. There are around [00:00:45] 13,000 Żabka stores in a country of just 37 and a half million people. Often these stores are within sight of one another.
[00:00:55] Now, I was only in Poland for a week, and it was for a pretty [00:01:00] briskly paced family holiday, so I didn't do as much retail media recon as I would've liked. So today I'm going to share a few things that I'd noticed rather than any deep market research, similar to my recent note about [00:01:15] retail media in Australia.
[00:01:16] But I still think you're gonna find it really interesting. lots of fascinating things happening in this country. Let's jump in
[00:01:22]
[00:01:24] Kiri Masters: Now, in the blog version of this podcast, I do have a lot of photos which are going to help [00:01:30] to show the story and these activations better than I can describe in audio, but I will do my best. The first thing that I observed is an astounding number of parcel [00:01:45] lockers. Now, Poland, as I mentioned, has a population of 37 and a half million people, but they have 73,000 parcel lockers.
[00:01:57] That is one locker for [00:02:00] every 500 or so people This is far, a far greater number than the per head density in Germany or the UK, which would likely be the closest competitors there. [00:02:15] Certainly magnitudes more than Australia or the US
[00:02:20] And I'm not gonna get into the history of the different rival networks that built them, but that is a pretty fascinating story. A couple of those are actually [00:02:30] retailers, like we see with Amazon's parcel locker network.
[00:02:34] A number of them are carriers. But the point is, these lockers are absolutely everywhere, and every machine is a permanent street-level advertising surface. [00:02:45] So I don't think Poland set out to build Europe's densest out-of-home media network with its parcel lockers. It did it by accident and through a lot of competition that was regulated differently in other [00:03:00] countries.
[00:03:00] what we're left with is these surfaces that are now being used for advertising. Now, I didn't see advertising wraps on every parcel locker bank, but I did see it on a number of them. One [00:03:15] of them that I put in the blog is a InPost locker bank that is wrapped in an ad for Maxi Zoo, which is a pet store, I believe.
[00:03:25] Driving footfall to a named address. It has the address of the store with [00:03:30] a QR code to that retailer's app and their loyalty brand. So the company that, operates this parcel locker, InPost, sells this as a real media business. Their own sales material [00:03:45] claims that they have similar kind of wraps around more than twenty thousand lockers in the country.
[00:03:52] They also have advertising on digital screens on the machines that reach up to four million viewers a month, and they name all [00:04:00] kinds of advertisers here: fast-moving consumer goods, banking, telco, and automotive companies as the buyer base
[00:04:09] So that was something that I noticed immediately on the ground was this parcel network [00:04:15] that is being operated as a media network. Second one is connected TV ads. So during some downtime back at the Airbnb, me and my parents watched some shows on YouTube, and of course, we saw [00:04:30] some ads from Procter & Gamble brands, Ambi Pur, Ariel detergent.
[00:04:36] And this was interesting, and I couldn't quite figure out what was happening here because we weren't logged into YouTube on the TV, [00:04:45] and we hadn't been using retailer apps that could tie us back to any kind of audience targeting. So this could have been a remnant type of targeting from a previous Airbnb guest [00:05:00] or the host, I don't know.
[00:05:01] But what we saw were these P&G ads on YouTube with the retailer destinations being Allegro, which is kind of like the Amazon of Poland, and Media Expert, which is an electronics [00:05:15] and appliance chain. So I can't reliably infer anything here about the targeting. Like I mentioned, we weren't logged in to either the retailer or to the connected TV or YouTube channel, [00:05:30] so it's a bit of a crapshoot here.
[00:05:31] But it did remind me just how many factors there are when comparing media buying trends between regions, and privacy laws is just one of the drivers [00:05:45] here. So in the EU, using someone's data to target them on a third-party media, uh, site actually requires their opt-in first. So the GDPR laws need a lawful basis for the [00:06:00] processing.
[00:06:01] U-ultimately, you need to opt in to this targeting, whereas in the US, there's no comprehensive federal privacy law. The state laws, that exist mostly give people the right to opt out of having their data shared for [00:06:15] cross-site ad targeting. And so this is why, it's not just why, but it's one of the many reasons why we have a larger off-site media
[00:06:25] market in the US relative to most countries in Europe. So [00:06:30] I just bring that up, because it was something that I was reminded of while I was there just how many factors go into the mix of media available with the lockers in mind, right? that was certainly an, an [00:06:45] accident born out of very different regulatory perspectives in Poland that led to so many carriers and so many Retail is actually building these parcel lockers. [00:07:00] poor audience targeting is frustrating, but for retail media teams it can be costly too. With Growth Loop's composable commerce media solution, you can turn your first-party [00:07:15] data into hundreds of high-value audience segments and launch campaigns faster. After partnering with Growth Loop, instant commerce pioneer Gopuff scaled from a hundred syndicated [00:07:30] audience segments to more than six hundred, and now it takes less than forty-eight hours to turn around a custom segment for one of their brand partners.
[00:07:41] Learn more about how Growth Loop is [00:07:45] powering Gopuff's best-in-class retail media operations at go.growthloop.com/breakfast. That is [00:08:00] go.growthloop.com/breakfast
[00:08:01] Okay, moving on, moving along. Żabka. So I mentioned Żabka in the opener, and we were just astounded by how many stores there were, often within eyesight of one another. And so I was [00:08:15] really fascinated by this. I, I looked it up, and I found out it was due to a few different reasons. Number one, Żabka is run under a franchise model, and the franchise has very low startup costs.
[00:08:28] And so they acquire a [00:08:30] lot of local owner operators, a lot of mom-and-pop kind of setups, which lets the parent company expand rapidly because there, there's people who can just set up a franchise really cheaply. Second is a [00:08:45] very smart location planning. They use algorithms to pick new spots, and so that means, that they have-- This is a crazy percentage.
[00:08:55] Thirteen thousand stores nationwide in a country of just [00:09:00] thirty-seven and a half million people. And these stores are all still remarkably busy, so they've done a really good job of their location planning, obviously. Another reason is Sunday trading exemptions. [00:09:15] So Poland introduced strict bans on Sunday shopping for major supermarkets, but Żabka was exempted from those, um, restrictions.
[00:09:25] And so if the store is run by the individual [00:09:30] franchisee, they can legally work behind the counter themselves, uh, on Sundays. So that's how they get around the, um, the, the trading exemption, and that means they sort of have a monopoly on Sunday, Sunday trade [00:09:45] in the country. And then finally, high-demand services.
[00:09:47] It's not just, you know, convenience items. They offer hot food, parcel pickup, things like that. But obviously, I was intrigued by what they are doing from a media perspective. [00:10:00] Lots of screens. Every store that I personally went into had at least one screen. They were typically behind the counter promoting their own food items.
[00:10:12] there were some other placements that I saw in a, in a [00:10:15] few different locations at the front of the store that were advertising, third-party brands. I saw one for an oatmeal pouch brand, for a tea drink, some si- digital signage in [00:10:30] stores. And what I found was that this is a pretty new network. They launched only in January of last year with over fifteen hundred digital screens across their network of more than eleven thousand stores at the time.
[00:10:43] so I'm speculating [00:10:45] here, but I am imagining that most of that ad inventory isn't being sold, at least not yet. I visited a lot of Żabkas and, [00:11:00] uh, mostly saw their own products being advertised there. So two outsider guesses, and this is speculation. One is that it's still a very new media network. and/or Żabka is prioritizing selling their own products right now.
[00:11:14] [00:11:15] But certainly a in-store ad network with a lot of density, and these were really captivating screen placements
[00:11:26] And number four final thing that I noted here was [00:11:30] a drugstore and beauty chain called Rossmann, and lots of screens, particularly at the entryways for Rossmann. I later uncovered that Rossmann has six thousand screens [00:11:45] across fifteen hundred stores, so a lot bigger screen density than the Żabka.
[00:11:51] Um, that was as of twenty-twenty-two. Lots of window-facing screens, some internal screens installed to pull [00:12:00] people in and steer them around the store. Those screens were, installed in twenty-twenty-two, and they announced a retail media partnership with OneTech Group for programmatic in-store, management only in January of this year.[00:12:15]
[00:12:15] So that is four years between Rossmann installing six thousand screens and announcing a programmatic in-store partnership. So again, speculation on my side. They were mainly promoting their own [00:12:30] house brand products. They have a popular one called Isana. during those four years, maybe they were promoting their own stuff, or perhaps the ads were being sold directly to brand partners or as part of trade marketing [00:12:45] spend.
[00:12:46] And while I was there, I, I certainly saw a little bit of that mix that led me to that conclusion. I saw, um, their private label brand being advertised, Rossmann exclusives being advertised, and also [00:13:00] third-party brands like Colgate advertising there. So a little bit of a mix as of today. So those were some of the things that I saw.
[00:13:10] It was such a short trip. I wish I could have seen more. I'd like to [00:13:15] thank all the people that reached out to me to suggest retail media experiences to check out and offering to show me around. I truly appreciate that. I ended up having less time to research than I wanted. I might have been, having fun with my [00:13:30] family on, on a vacation instead.
[00:13:32] But hopefully, that just means that a second trip is in order. And finally, a quick plug for Poland. I was just there for a week, but I found it to be an incredibly beautiful, [00:13:45] clean, hospitable, friendly place. I did not know what to expect before I got there, but I was completely blown away. And so I'd definitely recommend adding Poland to your travel list.
[00:13:58] That's it for today. [00:14:00] Thank you for listening, and I'll catch you next week.
[00:14:02]