Pacvue wants to solve retail media’s fragmentation problem

This article was written with the assistance of ChatGPT.

The news: Adtech company Pacvue is expanding beyond retail media into additional ecommerce tools to assist brands in determining optimal product pricing, inventory management, and problem resolution, per Insider.

• To do so, the company is merging with Helium 10, which, like Pacvue, is owned by ecommerce software and data platform Assembly.

Zoom in: As demand for retail media has grown, spurred by retailers looking for additional revenue streams and marketers searching for alternatives to cookie-led advertising, so too has the number of retail media tools available on the market.

• Pacvue already works with several major retailers, including Kroger, Sam’s Club, and DoorDash, and handles over $150 million in gross merchandise value. But its new strategy speaks to both the level of competition from players like The Trade Desk and Publicis Groupe’s CitrusAd, as well as the need for a streamlined approach to retail media and ecommerce.
• The fragmentation in the marketplace has made it difficult for advertisers to gauge how their retail media investments are performing, especially given different reporting standards between networks and varying levels of sophistication.

The big takeaway: Without a clear industry standard to compare retail media network results, the onus is on retailers themselves to offer up more sophisticated tools to improve campaign performance, targeting abilities, and ensure accurate measurement. If not, they risk losing out further to Amazon, whose head start in the space has enabled it to command 76.8% of US retail media digital ad spend.

Go further: For more on what marketers need to know about retail media, check out our Retail Media Explainer.