By Jonas Glad, Co-founder and CEO DoohClick
So much is being written around what people perceive to be “retail media”. So many terms, different definitions, pontifications and views.
Brian Gleason, chief revenue officer at Criteo, has described retail or “commerce media” as “the intersection” of inventing a new category, performance marketing, the point of discovery and interacting with customers.
“With $6bn at play [in the UK retail market alone] it’s certainly a market I think every retailer, regardless of size, is thinking about,” he told The Media Leader.
Now GroupM is projecting that the retail media market will grow 25% this year and surpass television revenue by 2028 as more retailers peddle media inventory.
Growth is reportedly being driven by advertisers whose product isn’t listed on an ecommerce site, adding media to their plans either in-store, online or via a direct or programmatic audience buy.
Retail media was one of the primary themes at the 2023 Digital Signage Summit Europe in Munich which set out how to show what in store signage operators / providers are doing – or not doing – to raise the bar.
One key message was to make better use of modern developer tools. There’s a lot of sophisticated development and technology happening in Europe apparently. Music to our ears.
The Invidis folk meanwhile hammered home some truths, telling companies in this space that if they stick to the code base and platform they’ve been building up for many years, they’re in deep trouble because newer companies have better secure platforms that will resonate with the IT people who are increasingly becoming the decision-makers and buyers of digital signage tech.
Of course digital signage is just one small element of a much wider ecosystem created by retailers to reach customers via owned channels, from their ecommerce site to apps to in-store LED walls.
Within that mix sit digital OOH screens primed to execute a relevant message when the shopper is in the vicinity of a store – a very efficient way of reaching more customers that might not already be purchasing from the retailer through their owned channels or weren’t intending to visit the bricks and mortar store.
Department stores and shopping malls are highly likely to sell their audience data, together with time on the screens in their shops and centers, to their retail tenants. But the real magic happens when the retailers themselves use their own customer data to sell their own digital screen space directly to their suppliers.
And the ones who can execute that are likely to earn a fortune.
Big brands which own bricks and mortar stores won’t necessarily have their own TV channel or a radio channel, but they do have all the other channels, including in store screens, to execute ads to the right audience with precision and zero wastage.
We are now seeing large media companies setting up OOH networks in the US like Grocery TV offering in store DOOH advertising. These too form part of the retail media channel, but they can’t execute it as well as companies like Walmart and Tesco who have first party data.
It’s clear retailers have a totally different perspective when thinking about their own channels. And they are starting to realize the value of digital signage either using screens for their own campaigns which gives them zero cost on advertising space or by selling that space to other brands.
But to truly deliver ROI they need to start transacting and behaving like an out of home company. And that’s what DoohClick brings to the table.
We are giving the non-experienced DOOH retailers the chance to visualize their inventory, its value, how to sell it and how to report back so they can justify the investment to the advertisers who are paying to appear.
Traditional retailers will have a digital signage system probably with a loop based scheduling system. They probably don’t have a reporting function like campaign performance. They probably don’t have an evaluation of the audience that they absolutely have the data on, like the footfall into each store.
Combine those data points, put them into DoohClick and retailers will begin to transact as a media owner. And that, we believe, will bring in revenue from the agencies.
If the agencies receive a plan from, say, Tesco, which offers them 10,000 screens for two weeks, the agencies won’t be able to compare or understand it as they won’t have the same data points they get when they purchase media from a pure DOOH business such as Ocean Outdoor Nordics.
This is what a live, data driven ad network management system like DoohClick brings to retail media and why retail brands should be talking to us.
We know the big retail brands are preparing to pile in the retail media space. And it’s important DOOH doesn’t miss the boat. Websites and apps may well capture customer demand but they can’t deliver the reach and brand building fame of DOOH.
To find out how to set up, update or monetize your retail media OOH network, please contact Jonas Glad at DoohClick, email jonas.g@doohclick.com