Retailers should build their advertising experiences—especially in-store—around contextual factors like time of day, time of week, physical proximity, season, weather, or relevant shopping behavior.
Avoid the temptation to build all ad experiences around personalization. Targeted offsite ads will require this approach to some extent, but there is no need to introduce personalized targeted ads into the in-store experience. This conjures up visions of the dystopian advertising future from “Minority Report” for most shoppers.
3. Emphasize quality of creative—not quantity of impressions—to command high CPMs
Over time, digital ad markets turn into commodity marketplaces. With few constraints on supply, ad sellers’ primary incentive becomes generating as many impressions as possible, which only exacerbates the race to the bottom on price. Because physical stores have inherent supply constraints, retailers need not slip into the commoditization trap. They should instead treat their inventory like TV, where inventory is scarce and high-quality, brand-safe, contextually relevant environments are maintained.
Shoppers want high-quality ads in physical stores. In addition to promoting attractive deals, the most attention-grabbing in-store ads will be unique and eye-catching, or introduce shoppers to new products, per a July 2022 Path to Purchase Institute study.