With the Cannes Lions Festival around the corner, discussions are turning to the ways retailers, agencies, publishers and TV programmers are reaching their audience.
Zach Weinberg, VP of eCommerce at Reprise Digital, caught up with Beet TV to talk about some of the eCommerce talking points around this year’s event.
Here are some of the take-homes.
The rise of retail media advertising
In the world of eCommerce, all eyes are focused on the intersection of platform innovation, first party data and ad formats.
Marketplace retail media adverts had their Big Bang in 2013, when Amazon began pushing their in-platform ad capabilities – particularly the paid search element.
Other platforms quickly followed suit. Now, retail media networks like Amazon, Target and Walmart are now selling ads within their own marketplaces.
Vendors like Criteo and CitrusAd give smaller retailers an opportunity to serve ads directly on their chosen marketplaces – improving P&L and generating useful consumer insights simultaneously. These tech partners are critical to providing the capability and functionality retailers need to reach their customers on the major eCommerce platforms.
For the best results, retailers should present consistent content across everything from product pages to packaging – and this should relate exactly to what your customers are searching for:
“A strategy really has to depend on how are you balancing the consistency of message, creative ad type in store as well as online, and ensuring that whatever content you have on your package that sits on that shelf is the same content you have on that product page, is the same content that consumers are actually searching for.”
Live commerce – on the horizon, or already here?
Zach also discussed the rise of live commerce – that is, the blending of live online events with instant purchasing. This has already been a huge success in the Far East, particularly during the annual Singles Day shopping event. In the US, this model hasn’t yet hit home with consumers – but astute marketers should be ready when it does.
“Right now, live commerce is where mobile commerce was back in 2012. Everybody was talking about it, everyone saw that it was going to happen but it hadn’t yet materialised”.
But just from what we know on TikTok and Facebook, the opportunity is there. It’s just about finding the right incentive, functionality to make consumers catch on.
Zach’s interview is part of a 10 episode lead-up to the big event. Check out the full interview on Beet.TV for more insights on the future of eCommerce marketing.
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