Retail media is an advertising business setup by a retailer, enabling advertisers to purchase advertising space across the retailer’s owned properties (e.g. website) and paid media (offsite). These ads leverage their first party data from retailers' platforms throughout the shoppers’ purchase journey.
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Retail media networks have opened a new avenue in the digital advertising landscape that enables retailers to grow revenue by monetizing their platform. One of the key strengths of using a retail media solution is that it provides visibility into advertisers performance through closed-loop attribution. It has proven to be both — a beneficial business opportunity and a successful marketing channel. Retail media platforms enable retailers to control their brand and advertisers the transparency to evaluate their ad performance.

‍Benefits of retail media as future of advertising
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‍Retail media platforms are seeing success, yet some retailers and advertisers have questioned its trajectory. As Amazon has the largest share in the retail media right now. It has given retailers a perception that the window to emulate this technology has closed and nothing can be farther from the truth.
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Retail media networks offer a scope for incremental growth in revenue. According to McKinsey, more than 80% of spend flowing into retail media networks is incremental. For instance, Monetize client Purplle, has generated 1.8Cr INR revenue per month through the retail media platform. Retail media networks help retailers to close avenues of revenue leakage which adds more earnings to their bottomline.
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With retail media networks, advertisers get access to high-intent audiences, performance data, and ease in running ads. It also offers comprehensive analytics on their ads which hikes their marketing efforts than just regular CPC or CPM. Retailers are able to offer a comprehensive analysis of advertisers activities. Additional features such as ease in running ads, user targeting, and self-serving platform has helped in retaining advertisers and getting them to spend more on retail media ads.

5 actions for retailers to embrace retail media
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‍With the benefits stated above, lets see how retail leaders can take initiative to include retail media networks on their online platform.

1. Direct action
Retailers should take a multi-functional head-first approach, where different teams such as marketing, merchandising, data, and tech can start working on developing a retail media network. Treating early failures as a worthwhile experience will result in positive results and better learnings.
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2. Creating a unique offering
Analyzing and seeking answers for questions such as:
             - How is your retail media network different from the rest?
             - Are you offering proper audience/associated customer insights?
             - Is your e-commerce/brand onboarding experience good enough to
               make advertisers join?
The feature set you will choose for the minimum viable product is going to have a serious impact on your team’s skill set and which partners and agencies are most appropriate for help. Precise planning for value addition in consideration of all the players in a unique way.

3. Unite the organization
Be it marketing, ecommerce, merchandising, product or even analytics — all the key parties need to believe in the retail media vision. It is critical that retailers such as you tell a compelling story that showcases how your retail media network will prompt ecommerce and the core of retail business. Work out a plan to make the best use of internal and external resources and implement.

4. Select the best partners
Retail leaders should establish specific roles that will handle crucial retail media network activities, such as, sales, supply and demand management, campaign planning, purchases, and report delivery.
Evaluating how these will affect across key ad-inventories such as sponsored listing, rich media ads, off-site targeting, banner ads etc. Partners with the precise management capabilities and understanding to build the retail media network are crucial.

5. Building a business
At the heart of things, retailers must understand that their business is not just simply enabling ad products. It requires proper financial planning, reconciliation procedures, billing, accounting, legal and regulatory compliances, billing, and much more. Brands and advertisers expect many of these back-end capabilities and demand trustworthy media competency and best-in-class campaign operations.


‍In Conclusion
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‍Retail media networks are not the future of digital marketing, rather it is the present. Retailers have started to take notice of the fact that they can use their platform to run ads and drive revenue, while advertisers have understood that retail platforms offer better data, opportunities, and results for sales and even brand building.

Want to know more?
‍Looking for ways to leverage your first party data and traffic to earn additional revenue? Our AI ML powered retail media tech, Monetize, helps you enable every advertiser to run ads on your platform to achieve their marketing goals and ensure higher yields for you. To learn more, contact us today.

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