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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
My RampUp Notes: Data Collaboration in Retail Media Networks
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[00:00:00] Kiri Masters: last week. I shared what people were saying in the hallways at the ramp up conference, today I'm emptying the rest of my notebook if there was a thread running through everything.
[00:00:12] The sessions, the [00:00:15] panel that I moderated, the side conversations. It was data collaboration. Not as a talking point, but as the practical thing that kept determining who wins budget, who loses it, and who gets invited back [00:00:30] Live Ramps Conference, live Ramps, DNA, but it also happens to be where the industry's real energy is right now.
[00:00:38] Here are five takeaways from my notebook.
[00:00:41]
[00:00:43] Kiri Masters: Number one, brands are building [00:00:45] scorecards, but not against who you'd think I'm hearing from multiple large CPG companies that they're using. Structured frameworks, bubble grids, investment matrices, weighted scorecards to [00:01:00] rank commerce, media networks against each other.
[00:01:03] Sophistication. Capabilities, scale, reach, those kinds of metrics. And the competitive set isn't limited just to other retail media [00:01:15] networks. Brand leaders are making it clear. They are also evaluating retail media networks against Google and Meta for those same dollars. Last year in November at the Path to Institute live [00:01:30] conference,
[00:01:31] the Global Retail Media Strategy director at Mars's Snack Business described how they have a two dimensional matrix that evaluates retail media networks on their media capabilities [00:01:45] and their commercial growth potential.
[00:01:47] So there's a real theme running through here. There are scored evaluations and scorecards happening as opposed to gut feel.
[00:01:57] So what earns you a higher spot on these [00:02:00] grids? Obviously you need to have a media property that performs ad units that perform, but there's another piece as well that. Can be a differentiator. It is how well a network helps them to understand the [00:02:15] consumer. Most large CPG companies don't sell direct to consumer.
[00:02:20] They don't have loyalty programs that generate first party data. The retailer or commerce media network is the bridge, and the [00:02:30] networks that share that consumer data generously are the ones that can also differentiate themselves.
[00:02:37] Number two, how DoorDash went from pennies to a priority. I moderated a panel at Ramp Up with Peter [00:02:45] Giordano, who is the general manager of strategy and platform at Door Dash's Ads business and one of their brand partners, the brand side panelists noted how their investment in DoorDash started very modestly a [00:03:00] couple of years ago, but DoorDash had climbed into the priority territory because they have done.
[00:03:05] The work and part of that work was measurement. Peter described door Dash's ghost ads methodology. This [00:03:15] is a holdout study where they simulate consumers in an ad auction. They identify who would've seen an ad. They withhold that ad and compare the outcomes, and that creates a higher [00:03:30] fidelity incrementality measurement than what most networks are able to offer.
[00:03:35] Those results help, but the brand partner didn't just up their spend because of the campaign metrics. The results actually help [00:03:45] with the internal narrative too. Proof points that cascade up to leadership and influence future investment levels
[00:03:53] because it's the executive team that still questions whether e-commerce spending is [00:04:00] cannibalizing other dominant mature sales channels. Peter also described at DoorDash a food graph that has been built over 13 years of purchase behavior across 56 million [00:04:15] monthly active users, increasingly available to brand partners as self-serve insights.
[00:04:22] And the brand partners team has used it to spot signals like emerging cuisine trends in delivery [00:04:30] occasions. And that kind of data ultimately can feed into a product innovation pipeline for the future. And that is a data collaboration event that produces value well beyond the targeting and campaign planning.
[00:04:44] It's really a [00:04:45] two-way exchange that earns a network, a bigger bubble on the grid. Increases spending and grows the category too. This truly is a win-win [00:05:00] Did you know that leading retail media networks drive 85% of their ads through mid and long tail advertisers?
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[00:05:40] take away. Number three, CPGs are pushing hard on [00:05:45] self-service. This came up repeatedly at the event. I have heard it a bunch of times before, but specifically here.
[00:05:53] One CPG leader described how a few years ago many of the retail media networks that they worked with. Were [00:06:00] done through managed services, sales teams that operate at the retailer, managing the buyers, managing the reporting, um, as a human rather than having a self-serve dashboard [00:06:15] or login. Now brands are really pushing their retail partners to go self-service and the reasons.
[00:06:23] Connect directly to data access. Self-service gives brands [00:06:30] direct visibility into consumer insights for campaign planning, and that is something that they lose when everything runs through a managed service. Layer one leader argued it's also better for brand safety, that managed services [00:06:45] introduce too many risks.
[00:06:46] While self-service allows a brand to closely monitor where their ads show up, and so that is ultimately a benefit for the retailer too. You don't want that liability if an ad appears somewhere that it [00:07:00] shouldn't let the brand take care of it. They want to do that. They want to have that control.
[00:07:06] It's ultimately better for everyone. Another point that stuck here is that if retailers want to compete for that national media budget. [00:07:15] That they're all gunning for. They need self-service tools that operate at the same velocity as the platforms that brands are already buying national media inventory through.
[00:07:29] [00:07:30] Number four, how many ad servers are you running? This one's less of a takeaway and more of a. Huh. During the session on experiential retail media, which featured Lyft, Marriott, and [00:07:45] United, I learned that United's connective media runs five ad servers, five. I wrote it down right away.
[00:07:56] When you think about all the places that ads get deployed across a [00:08:00] united travel experience, places like the Seatback screens, when you're using your personal device using the Sky Link network, it starts to make sense. They all have their own ad server, but the implication is [00:08:15] that actually delivering a cohesive media buying experience.
[00:08:19] Across all of these ad servers is no small thing. Now, after the session, I turned to an acquaintance who runs [00:08:30] measurement for a grocery retail media network, and I asked them how many ad servers they operate. In store at least four, they said, expressing that this isn't exactly their dream scenario. I don't [00:08:45] have a great conclusion here.
[00:08:46] Just filing it away as a reminder that the operational complexity underneath these networks is often invisible to the buy side, and it goes some way towards explaining why data collaboration between brands and [00:09:00] retailers is still harder than it should be.
[00:09:03] And And number five, ramp Up offers a blueprint for customer events,
[00:09:07] One observation about the event itself. LiveRamp has built ramp up into a proper destination event, and they've [00:09:15] done it without making anyone feel like they're sitting through a sales pitch.
[00:09:19] At no point did it feel heavy handed. It just so happens that every conversation comes back to data connectivity and collaboration. What a coincidence. But I say [00:09:30] that with genuine respect because it really worked The quality and diversity of the audience was impressive. The programming was really strong and the corridor conversations were better than most main stages I've been at this year.
[00:09:44] [00:09:45] It also happens to align a lot with what I've been writing about that the networks winning budget. Other ones sharing data, not hoarding it. That's it for today. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch it tomorrow.
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