As retail media continues its rise as an effective and preferred channel for marketers, retailers and brands are beginning to look beyond their own ecosystems to better to understand its broader impact. As retail media grows, we at Threefold believe brands and media networks will focus less on the short-term impacts, like ROI and ROAS, and more on metrics like customer lifetime value. Looking at retail media's impact outside of a retailer’s four walls is part of that evolution.
First and foremost, Threefold-powered RMNs focus on what works to grow sales within a retailer’s media ecosystem. However, it’s crucial to explore the broader effects of a well-executed retail media campaign. Demonstrating success within stores is vital, but there are ways to take this further.
Retail media giant Amazon recently added Multi-Retailer Attribution to its measurement portfolio. Through a partnership with the retail intelligence and activation platform Stackline, the Stackline Multi-Retailer Attribution tool combines proprietary audience technology and Amazon Marketing Cloud. This partnership enables brands to quantify consumer purchases driven by their Amazon advertising investments across all major retailers, not just Amazon sales.
New research from Co-op Media Network
Threefold’s team at Co-op, the No. 1 convenience retailer in the UK, partnered with research firm Circana to better understand the Halo Effect of its retail media: the impact for brands on sales outside Co-op’s retail ecosystem. Co-op Media Network and Circana discovered that Co-op shoppers have a broad retailer repertoire, indicating that targeting Co-op shoppers via Co-op Media Network engages individuals who are likely to spend in the wider retail channel.
Co-op and Circana hypothesized: “Does convenience media drive positive brand awareness and mid-term recall, resulting in a positive sales impact in surrounding Halo stores?” Using campaign activation site lists, Circana built store catchment models based on store and purchase attributes, then applied its matching algorithm to create statistically significant test and control panels of Co-op and identified halo retailers.
Key Findings and Case Studies
The analysis identified key brand sales metrics, such as percentage increase in sales value, incremental sales and ROAS. The study offered the ability to view the complete impact of a brand's retail media spend across both Co-op’s stores and surrounding retailers.
Dean Harris, Head of Co-op Media Network, in July presented the results at MAD//FEST LONDON, saying:
“The results from our research with Circana are clear. When brands activate campaigns with Co-op, there is an immediate positive sales impact in our stores and in the surrounding area with retailers we typically consider competitors. As a retail media owner, our main goal for brands that advertise with us is to generate sales regardless of where the customer purchases the product.”
The study included three case studies across different categories to understand the true incremental impact:
Global Beer Brand:
12% sales lift in Co-op stores
3% sales lift in halo stores
A 4x lift in incremental sales in halo stores compared to Co-op stores alone, attributed to the larger number of halo stores and larger pack sizes bought in those stores.
Sweet Confectionary Brand:
29.1% immediate positive sales impact in-store for the featured SKU
24.9% for the brand in Co-op stores
8.6% uplift for the featured SKU and 6.2% at the brand level in halo stores, translating to an additional x1.3 incremental revenue from the activation.
Ice Cream Tub Brand (Activating a SKU exclusive to Co-op):
29.5% positive impact at the brand level in Co-op stores
15.4% brand level in halo catchment stores, translating to x1.1 in incremental revenue when viewing the campaign holistically.
Threefold Managing Director Sean Crawford says: “While exciting, these results are exactly what we would expect. We at Threefold know that best-in-class retail media strategies do more than just influence bottom-of-the-funnel purchasing decisions at the retailer where a campaign is activated. The best retail media campaigns create a long-lasting impact for advertisers, increasing those short-term sales but, equally as importantly, growing brand loyalty.
“The ability to see the halo impact of our media investments across multiple retailers provides unprecedented insights and opportunities. It empowers brands to understand the full scope of their advertising effectiveness and drives innovation in how we approach retail media strategies. This kind of data-driven approach is revolutionizing how the industry thinks about marketing and customer engagement,” he added.
These findings from Co-op and Circana make it more than evident that the impacts of retail media extend beyond the stores where the media is active. This research is groundbreaking in understanding the long-term opportunities for brands. For Co-op, this is only the beginning of comprehending that value. With retailers like Amazon leading the way, the development in this field will continue to evolve. While there’s still room for innovation in the Retail Media Network (RMN) measurement space, emerging case studies and opportunities like these inspire retailers to innovate in measurement and showcase the true value of their retail media investments beyond the short term.
About Ella Rice
Ella Rice is a client manager in the Threefold North America team, where she supports CPGs in planning, building and measuring retailer campaigns. Prior to her role at Threefold, Ella spent three years on the Plan-Apps team within SMG, supporting CPGs with insights on campaign performance and building consultancies that leveraged Plan-Apps data. Ella previously worked as an account manager for a digital marketing agency. Want to chat about how Threefold can supercharge your retail media strategy? You can reach her at ella.rice@threefold.team.
About Threefold
Founded in 2008, Threefold is the world's leading Retail Media Network (RMN) specialist, headquartered in both New York and London. As part of the SMG agency network, which employs nearly 400 retail media experts, Threefold's primary mission is to unlock incremental brand and supplier budgets, curate media campaigns that supercharge sales and elevate its retail partners into top-tier omnichannel media owners, spanning in-store, off-site and online.
Threefold's services include the leading Retail Media Operating System Plan-Apps, consultancy and a white-label in-house solution that has seen the agency build, run and operate over 10 Retail Media Networks to date. In the UK, Threefold runs and operates Walgreens' Boots Media Group, ASDA’s LS Eleven Media Services, Co-op Media Network, Morrisons Media Group and retail media for The Very Group.
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