Think of off-site retail media as filling a bus with potential customers and driving them directly to your storefront, Bob Coon senior vice president of US sales at TripleLift, said during a recent EMARKETER webinar.
But just delivering customers to your storefront doesn’t guarantee they will buy. Here’s what retailers and marketers need to know to take advantage of off-site retail media.
Ensure your brand is retail-ready. Check that products are in stock, they’re priced appropriately, and, most importantly, they rank in organic search. The worst thing that could happen after you spend the money to get a consumer to search for your product is having them go to a competitor, said Mark Mannino, chief marketplace officer at Flywheel.
Plan different placements across channels. Mannino recommended using attribution tools to understand the impact of the channel on the customer lifecycle, then optimizing accordingly. “Dig deep into tools such as data clean rooms, marketing clouds, and streaming data so you can really evaluate what ads and channels are driving the performance that you need.”
You might have to rethink your KPIs. “Off-site retail media means advertisers aren’t limited by their own web traffic,” said Coon. “It also means that off-site retail media ads capture consumers earlier in their purchasing journey. The consideration phase may be longer, but that doesn’t make it any less important.
“Driving the bus back to the store is critical,” he continued. “Otherwise, you're only going to convert the people in the store and that may not be good enough, especially for mature brands. So thinking about the longer sales cycle, the consideration metrics that come with being off-site is a really important component to think holistically and long term.”
Why off-site: Off-site retail media ad spend will grow 61.5% this year to reach $10.64 billion, according to our March 2024 forecast.
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