Retail media is known for its accountability – the idea being that it’s easier in retail media than in other types of media buy to attribute a sale to an ad. This granularity was what attracted budget initially; but with more networks competing for advertiser spend, buyers want more. They want more value further up the funnel, and they don’t want to have to wade through an endless number of self-serve platforms for every retailer on their target list.
A new partnership between Wolt Ads and Koddi aims to solve for both of these challenges.
The DoorDash-owned delivery platform and the commerce media technology company have joined forces to bring Wolt’s commerce media inventory into The Trade Desk via an SSP integration, giving agencies programmatic access to Wolt’s inventory without needing to learn a new self-serve platform. The partnership launched first in Germany, representing Koddi’s first foray into the German retail media market.
“Sometimes we talk about retail media and commerce media, and we focus in on the capital R retail, rather than focusing on capital M media,” says Paul Dahill, Managing Director, Sales EMEA at Koddi. “We need to make it as easy as possible for media buyers to be able to buy media the way they want to. One of the ways to do that is to offer audiences and inventory in the environment they’re already buying through.”
Fragmented Europe
Wolt was founded in Finland and operates across a wide array of markets in Europe and the Middle East, including Denmark, Cyprus, Malta, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. When compared with regions such as the United States, the European market is very fragmented, particularly when buyers go grocer by grocer.
“It’s very complicated as a media buyer to purchase their raw media data via individual self-serve platforms,” Dahill explains. “With Wolt running across 31 markets, it’s already an incredible entry point for brands who want to try and activate across them.” Add the integration with the Trade Desk, where buyers are already transacting, and the process becomes more straightforward still.
With 18 years spent watching the industry progressively fragment and become more complex, Wolt’s Global Senior Director of Retail Media, Catalina Salazar, is motivated to do anything that introduces a spot of simplification. Given that CPG clients now routinely have “200 proposals from different retail media networks” on their desks at once, “let alone learning how to manage all of those offerings – it becomes really difficult.”
For her, it was a question not if, but when should they do it and the decision was governed by having a quality proposition (“a very solid, consented audience proposition, reporting end-to-end, closed loop attribution) that could then “open up the floodgates” for agency partners.
The funnel under fire
With Wolt’s extensive retail media network, data isn’t an issue. “We know who’s buying, what they’re buying, and how that basket’s looking,” says Salazar. But piecing that story together in order to connect brand exposure to a particular shopper and their activity – that’s often another question altogether, and Salazar insists, “we can enable that.”
“When the agency is buying that media and perhaps doing an awareness campaign then a performance campaign, we’re able to see the consumer go through those stages; we know when they come into the app and make a transaction,” she says. “Seeing the user end-to-end, connecting through all those touchpoints, is super valuable to a brand because they can sometimes be [flying] quite blind.”
Dahill suggests that buyers may not even need to separate out their campaigns for awareness and performance – but can accompany one with elements of the other, for example conducting an awareness campaign for a new flavour of ice cream while at the same time, using search placements to ensure that the flavour appears prominently as consumers look to buy. “It’s an incredible missed opportunity not to do that,” he insists.
Salazar even puts forward that the concept of the funnel itself may not be fit for purpose any more. “It’s a concept that’s slowly losing relevance and it’s more about the levels of influence in each channel.
“Touchpoints are very fragmented, and it’s a missed opportunity not to connect all the points as much as you can with an activation,” she says.
A titanic Teutonic opportunity
While Wolt has been at home in Germany for some time, this is Koddi’s first foray into the German commerce media market. And there’s nothing like taking off a big bite to chew.
Wolt operates in more than 70 German cities, with a dedicated grocery arm, Wolt Market, that connects major retailers and partners including Edeka, Bio Company, pharmacy chain Budni, and pet food specialist Fressnapf. “Germany is a fantastic opportunity for us because of the sheer size of the country,” Salazar says, pointing to “finding good selection and affordability in a privacy-first way.” This last point is critical – the German consumer is notoriously data- and price-sensitive. “They’re very set in their ways,” Salazar adds, “but we are making it easy for them to access their favourite retailers and brands. It’s a good opportunity for a brand to not have to worry so much about fragmentation.”
Koddi already has roughly 10% of its staff based in Düsseldorf, supporting European partners for close to a decade, and Dahill says the early signals are strong: “It made a lot of sense for us to focus on this market for partly that reason and also for how mature it is. The early signs are that the German market is pretty advanced [in agentic in commerce media] so when coming to them with new initiatives, the team are really open to it.”
For Wolt and Koddi, the future looks like more: enabling Wolt in more DSPs, as some can be stronger in one particular market than in another. For example, Adform is strong in the Nordics, while in the United States, The Trade Desk is growing rapidly.
“Just being where the consumer is, for us as a commerce media network, is really important,” says Salazar. “That will mean connecting with those people in all of the countries that we service.
“It’s really exciting – we owned incredibly special moments in people’s lives throughout the day. Enabling brands to be present and be part of those moments across so many markets is something we’re really proud of.”
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