“For us, the customer has to come first; we cannot interrupt that user journey and user flow.”
Sam Eads, Head of Ad Sales and Operations at Trainline, summed up the travel booking company’s thinking on commerce media in this way while speaking at a panel at InfoSummit London alongside leaders from Tesco, the Telegraph, and WPP Media.
Eads stated that Trainline has carried out “a huge amount of work in how we want [commerce media] to look and feel”, ensuring that Trainline’s commerce media proposition blends with the experience of using its app.
Co-panellists Stephen Edwards, Head of Agency at Tesco Media, and Camilla Child, Director of Commercial Strategic Growth at the Telegraph, each echoed these sentiments in a discussion that provided an insightful look into how commerce media networks are balancing delivering against commerce goals with creating an experience that serves the consumer.
A seamless commerce media experience
Trainline has first party transactional data from 27 million global customers (18 million of whom are in the UK) that offers an insight into who they are and where they’re travelling to – be that for work or leisure. Eads noted that activating this data in a commerce media context is playing an increasing role in how Trainline thinks about P&L as well as revenue diversification.
However, in the process, Trainline’s teams are keen not to lose sight of the wider goal of providing a high-quality service for customers. “It’s very much a balance, and this is a fast-emerging space for Trainline as a business,” he said.
In Eads’ view, the beauty of Trainline’s commerce media network lies in “how we can deliver and engage our audiences with relevant brands in-app and in a way that’s very seamless. I think that’s super exciting.”
He added that Trainline constantly carries out internal measurement to ensure that commerce media ads aren’t interruptive to the customer experience.
“Our core business comes from rail and coach journeys, and we cannot harm that customer flow and UX by serving partner messaging at irrelevant moments,” he said.
“And equally, there’s a performance [consideration] there: it’s not going to work if you’re showing up at the wrong moment. So, we’re really careful as to how we’re approaching that.”
Chiming with this, Tesco Media’s Stephen Edwards commented, “If customers stop shopping with Tesco, we don’t have a retail media business – so we need to reflect on everything we do through the eyes of the shopper and the experience that they have, regardless of whether they’re on our app or in-store.”
How commerce media can drive accretive value for customers
Edwards gave a recent example as to how Tesco Media has enacted this principle while testing and rolling out its new on-site video ads proposition.
“I cannot tell you how extensive the testing programme was for this,” he said. “[We] were constantly talking to thousands and thousands of customers about their experience.”
In the process, the company discovered that one element of the testing roadmap – one that was potentially very lucrative from a commerce media perspective – garnered a strong negative response from customers.
“And so, we killed it,” Edwards said succinctly. “We focus on the things that we believe can drive accretive value for customers – that are not going to interrupt the customer experience.” He stated that Tesco looks for areas of “mutual benefit” for marketers and agencies as well as for shoppers; but anything that disrupts the shopper experience (and causes a pushback from shoppers in the process) is non-negotiable.
On a similar theme, Eads added that Trainline has looked to flip around its thinking and consider where value can be added for customers as part of a commerce media proposition. Through its partnership with WPP, Trainline has been able to serve customers ads for relevant products such as an audiobook subscription through Audible if they’re booking a long train journey – offering them something to keep them occupied along the way.
These examples show, as Eads explained, “how we’re effectively using our data and the sheer scale of our audience in a really mature way to allow partner brands to build access and understand our datasets. Ultimately, that performance that you see at the end is much greater as a result.”
The value of a relationship built on trust and engagement
The Telegraph’s Camilla Child shared that employing first-party publisher data is extremely effective for advertisers, with up to a threefold increase in attention on average when advertisers use the Telegraph’s data across its properties.
Child explained how the publisher’s ability to gather detailed first-party data from its readership was directly linked to the level of trust placed in it by readers – further demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between positive consumer sentiment and commercial outcomes. On average, readers spend 20 minutes on the publication’s app per day, while a total of 10,000 comments daily are left across the publication.
This offers insight into everything from readers’ feelings about cultural moments to their shopping habits and views on different types of shopping environments. The Telegraph is looking at transforming this data into research reports tailored to its partners as well as industry trackers that reflect consumers’ changing views on subjects like travel, sports, and culture; it also feeds into the Telegraph’s commerce businesses, which span numerous verticals such as holidays, gardening, books and wine.
“It’s really, really nuanced data that we’re able to capture because we have such a trusted, highly-engaged relationship with our readers,” said Child, “[and because] we’re generating such a breadth of content and engaging editorial every single day.”
Related reading: Why Trainline’s retail media strategy is about both the journey and the destination when it comes to understanding its consumers’ needs
