Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
Best Bits
===
[00:00:00] Kiri: Last week I hosted a LinkedIn live with Paul Brenner from In-Store Marketplace and Michelle Dooley from Catalyst Media Consulting. And it was all about in-store retail media. And if we are measuring the [00:00:15] right things.
[00:00:16] this is the premise of some new research from Catalyst Media Consulting about. The scorecards that we're using to judge in-store retail media and how metrics like one-to-one [00:00:30] attribution might really be the wrong goal for physical retail.
[00:00:34]
[00:00:35] Kiri: In this white paper that in-store, marketplace and catalyst put together, they're proposing a measurement called shopper purchase rate. And the [00:00:45] reaction from the industry so far has been very positive. in this episode today, I'm gonna replay some highlights from that conversation last week.
[00:00:55] Sharing the current challenges with in-store retail media measurement, and what [00:01:00] might be a better system to work towards. Let's listen.
[00:01:04] Paul: There's something missing where. It feels like RMNs are trying to present a tech solution that will lead the horse to the water, but it we're still [00:01:15] not addressing the differences between merchant org and RMN org. That gets us out of test budgets because test budgets is where everybody's living, and when you're trying to implement technology with an [00:01:30] ROI against a CapEx, it's usually pretty steep.
[00:01:33] There it wasn't happening, right. The, the gap was just getting wider. And so that's when I approached Michelle and said, Hey, what, what do you think? You know, gimme some thoughts. And we just started, uh, you know, ideating, [00:01:45] I guess.
[00:01:46] Michelle: Yeah, I think we started with the, the idea that, or the hypothesis that if we could create a, um.
[00:01:54] That measurement was underdeveloped, right? That we needed a new metric or something [00:02:00] that would help increase the sophistication of the measurement that we were doing to move from the innovation dollars into a more annualized investment on the CPG side. So we actually did research with CPGs, RMNs agencies across the [00:02:15] US and Europe to say what are the pain points?
[00:02:18] What's working, what's not working. And one of the first questions that we asked is like, help us understand what in-store media looks like to you today. And the first I would get, I would get a question back [00:02:30] and the question would be, what do you mean by in-store media? And so it was like we were thinking digital in-store because we're coming from the RMN lens,
[00:02:38] Kiri: right?
[00:02:39] Michelle: The brands and even the, some of the RMNs or the retailers were saying in store is so much bigger than [00:02:45] that. And it includes things we've been doing for, since the beginning of time, right? The decades of, you know, end caps and shelf talkers and all these other things. Print signage in stores. So there's a modernization that's come, but because RMNs [00:03:00] have taken over some of the digital elements of it, there's a little bit of a, there was a little bit of a gap that we started to notice in terms of what are we actually talking about when we say in store, and then how do we make sure that there's, um, a coherent.
[00:03:14] [00:03:15] Understanding of like how we're being compared as an RMN going up against J VPs and decisions that come down to brands that say, I know how much product I'm gonna move if I have an item on end cap and we haven't proven that yet for [00:03:30] digital in-store. And so that, that ended up kind of reshaping our thinking around, okay, maybe our hypothesis is of we need to like have better sophistication in in store measurement.
[00:03:40] Maybe we need to reframe that based on. Some of the key findings
[00:03:44] [00:03:45] so the three themes in our research, the first one is what I just touched on, like in store is more than digital screens and audios and the brands really emphasized that I'm investing a lot in the store.
[00:03:57] Some of it goes to Inmar, some of it goes to [00:04:00] Neptune. Some of it's controlled by JDP conversations. Um, some of it's in cap shelf placement, like that's all perceived as in-store. And so it really reframed the way we're thinking about it, of like, we can't necessarily separate digital in-store from everything [00:04:15] else that happens in the store.
[00:04:16] And because of that mindset, the, the second theme emerged of like in store holistically as judged by product movement first. It's not that media metrics don't matter. And, and you know, impressions are still important [00:04:30] because we are, you know, advertising leaders that have to compare across channels, but product movement is king when we're talking about the store.
[00:04:39] Kiri: Yep.
[00:04:40] Michelle: And then the third thing was more of like an organizational thing. Like the merchant partnership is [00:04:45] still critical and in some cases underdeveloped, um, on the RMN side to really make sure that the merchant is advocating. I think one of our interview, one of our interviews said, um. My leadership doesn't have FOMO of digital [00:05:00] in-store because the merchant's not asking for it.
[00:05:02] And there was a time, mm-hmm. Three years ago when we went out and said, you know what? We really gotta invest in the metaverse, and we all know how that turned out. So this idea of like, in order to have valid proof points, [00:05:15] the approach might need to be different than kind of where we thought we were headed, which was, you know, can we get to IRO as, or what are the different things that.
[00:05:22] We could do to advance how we're approaching digital instore. Um, and it really took us back to what's foundational and what needs to be true [00:05:30] to create that through line with the rest of Instore.
[00:05:33] Kiri: Yeah. The me the merchant is going to care about product movement much more than they're gonna care about media metrics.
[00:05:39] So you're gonna get them on board by default with this approach.
[00:05:43] Michelle: The merchant's gonna care and [00:05:45] the brand when they have to justify it internally to their sales team, being able to have a conversation that says. Hey, your other in-store stuff, this is how product is moving and digital in-store. I can also show that is incremental product moving that [00:06:00] changes the conversation. Did you know that leading retail media networks drive 85% of their ads through mid and long tail [00:06:15] advertisers?
[00:06:15] Kiri Masters: Miracle Ads provides full funnel ad formats tailored to both one P and three P advertisers leveraging unique AI capabilities that provide unprecedented levels of relevance and engagement. [00:06:30] Retailers who want to capture ad spend from the long tail of three P Marketplace sellers use miracle ads in their tech stack.
[00:06:38] Learn more@miracle.com. That's M-I-R-A-K [00:06:45] l.com.
[00:06:45]
[00:06:46] Kiri: So let's jump into to what you came up with, which is, um, uh, shopper purchase rate. So I'd love, um, a little overview of that. Why you see, what, what is it and why do you see that as sort [00:07:00] of a, uh, a, a next, um, a next step in this evolution?
[00:07:05] Paul: Yeah, the, a little setup there, I think because we landed on shopper purchase rate after a lot of the discussion. Right. And I embedded myself [00:07:15] in the UK market several years ago and spent time, as you know, Kerry, they started with in store. Yeah, in the UK market. And what they did 15 years ago was they addressed [00:07:30] this bridge that we discovered in our like, oh yeah, now we figured it out.
[00:07:33] Now the UK figured it out first. Um. And they started with a language that was really cost per shopper, and it was the legacy. [00:07:45] How much does it cost to print this sign, to put this sign in the store? What's it lead time look like? What does compliance look like? Right? So there's like a cost model built around that.
[00:07:55] It's really more cost driven and then it's, it's, it's upon the merchant to [00:08:00] demonstrate, right? What the effect of how much product moved because of that. That's, I think that's very similar to shop purchase rate. It goes a little bit further in where the UK market pretty much just absorbed all the [00:08:15] shopper, right.
[00:08:15] Business and trade and made it part of RMN using those common metrics. Where we went was more of a how to unify the scorecard view, from a retail media perspective, if you grew up and your growth came from onsite and [00:08:30] offsite, this is something you ultimately have to address if you want in store to be as effective.
[00:08:38] And as much of a growth driver for your retail media goals, right? So it's like, why now? Why are you trying to [00:08:45] figure this out? Now, why is SPR seem like a, a sudden thing? It's because it, it's like the UK did in-store first, and now they're going the other direction, right? No, RMN had to go beyond a world they controlled for the first six years of this evolution, right?[00:09:00]
[00:09:00] And so what, what we think of, what I think of as SPR being a benefit is. Real time analytics and attribution screens, audio, whatever, have somehow become the larger discussion as opposed to [00:09:15] customer experience, content strategy, right. Using, uh, efficiency to your benefit, right? With these systems. So we really kind of wanna, I don't want the tech for measurement to be, to be the distraction.
[00:09:29] I want it [00:09:30] to be. More of, okay, let's address this right through the scorecard approach and shopper purchase rate, and allow the RMNs and the merchants to focus on the harder part, which is, where is this screen and how is it stay running every day? And what's the [00:09:45] content strategy to align with the price promotion and the placement, right?
[00:09:49] And not to repurpose content from another platform like TikTok and just put it on a screen in a store. Like how do, how do you address those things? And that, that's really what I, I feel like SPR could do is get [00:10:00] people. On the army and the merchant to use a common language, make that a more foundational and bring more of their energy to what is actually making a difference from my opinion, is placement of screen better content, unique experiences that [00:10:15] take that kind of x and y, right?
[00:10:17] Of like time and money coming from analog, static versus digital. You know, how do you, how do you intersect those at some point, right? So that your growth digital in stores, the benefit.
[00:10:27]
[00:10:28] Kiri: Well, that was just a short snippet [00:10:30] of a great conversation that I had.
[00:10:33] With Paul and Michelle about this new research that they put together. I'm gonna link up to the research in the show notes here, as well as a link back to the full replay of that webinar
[00:10:44] if you wanna [00:10:45] go a little bit deeper. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you tomorrow.
[00:10:48]