Retail media has exploded onto the marketing landscape in the last
couple of years. E-marketer declared 2022 as “the year of retail media”,
while in the autumn of that year a GroupM report said that retail media
already represented 10.7% of global ad spend.
The sector continues to grow. By December, GroupM’s Global 2022
End-Of-Year Forecast estimated retail media would account for $110.7
billion, up from its prediction of $101bn in September.
This growth is being driven by a number of factors. Retailers are looking
for new revenue streams. Brands are trying to replace the functionality
of the current third-party cookie-based marketing ecosystem.
Meanwhile both sides are looking for ways to mitigate the tough trading
environment caused by war, pandemic and economic conditions.
Add to this the ubiquity of programmatic advertising infrastructure, the
continuing development of technology around data collaboration, and
the maturing attitude of the industry to data protection and privacy,
and you have the conditions needed for the emergence of this new
marketing channel.
Retail media gives retailers a way of monetising the huge data resources
they’ve been building since the launch of electronic loyalty cards in the
1990s. It gives brands a way of using that opted-in first-party data to
target and measure their advertising more accurately, and to understand
customer behaviour more deeply. And it promises customers a more
personalised shopping experience, better deals and, ultimately, better
products.
Looking to the future
However, the immaturity of the sector means significant questions still
remain to be answered. How do we want the industry to operate in the
future, and what standards need to apply for that to happen? What new
opportunities are starting to emerge for brands and retailers? And what
barriers are there to all participants – and the sector itself – in realising
their full potential, and how can we remove or avoid them?
Our parent agency SMG has partnered with our data partner LiveRamp to produce this insightful industry report.
Click here to download the full report.