Good afternoon from Retail Media Age HQ,
It’s been a strong week for banner stats in the ad industry with the always eagerly-awaited release of the IPA’s Bellwether report for Q3 as well as a new report from Warc, ‘Global Ad Trends: The Cost of Being Seen’ – and a report from SMG in partnership with IAB and IAB UK, ‘The Commerce Media Connection Gap’.
RMA sibling publication New Digital Age has been abuzz with industry commentary on the Bellwether report, which you can read in the publication’s pages here and over here, with thoughts from the likes of Kantar, Uber Advertising, LG Ad Solutions, and Times Media. In particular, UK marketing budgets hitting a nine-quarter high feels like an especially positive development in a time where squeezed financials still tend to dominate headlines.
Warc’s Ad Trends research has heralded more good news for retail media investment in particular, with the finding that consumer brands are increasing their ad investment even amid slowing sales growth, with retail media being a beneficiary of the trend. As Internet Retailing’s Amanda Vlietstra wrote, “Money that was once allocated to trade and shopper marketing is increasingly being captured within measurable advertising channels, boosting recorded ad spend and raising advertising intensity.”
Warc has forecast that global ad spend will rise by 11.9% this year to a total of $1.34 trillion, and that retail media will be one of the channels driving the growth.
Naturally, SMG and IAB’s ‘Commerce Media Connection Gap’ report is more of a dedicated dive into issues specific to commerce media, with some interesting banner findings. When brands (168 of whom were surveyed for the report) were asked what would convince them to up their investment in commerce media, 46% identified proven, measurable ROI and incremental sales impact – leagues ahead of the next-highest factor, better operational alignment and cross-channel execution, being chosen by just 7%. It makes sense – basically, brands are looking for proof that retail media can deliver.
Another finding of note is that 47% of respondents to the research (58% among brands/advertisers alone) identified in-store as offering the greatest incremental value for retail media, but 41% classed it as the hardest to connect up behind the scenes. Among retail media networks who took part in the research, 16% also called in-store the most difficult to scale commercially.
As the report’s authors write, “In-store is where the value of connection and the difficulty of delivering it become most visible.”
If I could recommend an article that serves as an excellent complement to these insights, RMA recently interviewed Christian Skaarud, Head of Media & Retail Media at Coop Norge, ahead of his appearance at CustomerX. Coop Norge’s retail media proposition is entirely built around the store, and Skaarud gets candid about the work the retailer is doing to educate the market in Norway around what can be done with in-store retail media, why the opportunity around in-store in Norway is so huge, and what reporting and measurement look like – which can resemble digital more closely than you might expect.
Having set you up with your weekend reading, I’ll now wish you all an excellent end to the week, and I’ll see you in the next edition.
