Earlier this month, the advertising industry gathered in New York City for Advertising Week, an annual meeting of the biggest and brightest figures in advertising. Retail media was a key discussion point at this year’s conference, as it is anticipated to account for nearly a quarter of total media ad spend by 2028, reaching $129.93 billion, according to EMARKETER.
Home Depot Focuses on Retail Media
Melanie Babcock, VP of Orange Apron Media, The Home Depot’s Retail Media Network, took the stage on the afternoon of October 7 to discuss the evolution of the home improvement retailer’s Retail Media Network. Babcock was joined by Mandy Hunsicker Adams, Senior Director of Orange Apron Media, as well as Andreas Reiffen, CEO of Pentaleap, and Aran Hamilton, CEO of Vantage.
On stage, Home Depot introduced its new self-service ad platform, announced earlier in the month, which enables its supplier advertisers to self-manage their media campaigns through Orange Apron. The platform combines Home Depot’s on-site, off-site, and in-store touchpoints and is designed for suppliers of all sizes.
Babcock said: “We have thousands of small suppliers who may only have one to three products… and they don’t know anything about how to buy an ad, so we have to help them succeed inside of Home Depot. We have to think about everyone from the big guys all the way down to the small, and we believe Orange Access provides this capability for every supplier at Home Depot to be successful.”
Home Depot has indicated retail media is a key focus for its business, enhancing capabilities for advertisers throughout this year and rebranding as Orange Apron Media back in April.
SMG's take: Home Depot's continued investment into retail media and its commitment to evolving its RMN for brands proves that retail media is effective far beyond the typical grocery or convenience categories. Retailers of all types and sizes have platforms and properties that offer brands the opportunity to influence consumers at multiple points across their shopping journeys, growing sales for brands and ad revenue for retailers.
It’s More Than Short-Term Sales Growth
Measurement was the theme of a panel discussion featuring David Young, VP of Shipt Media, and Harman Sodhi, Sr. Director of Global Demand Strategy & Insights at Criteo. As the number of Retail and Commerce Media Networks expands, brands are increasingly looking to invest in networks that provide actionable data about campaign performance.
Young and Sodhi’s discussion centered on the evolution of campaign evaluation from attributed sales to deeper, more holistic metrics. Metrics like ROAS are important, but they don’t always tell the entire story of a campaign's performance.
Retail media, according to the speakers, is a “connective tissue” that not only drives sales but also serves as a way to communicate a brand’s story, establish emotional connections, and truly resonate with shoppers.
It’s not just about ROI or ROAS. As retail media matures, we at SMG x Threefold are confident brands will continue to recognize its full-funnel power, but that will only happen if RMNs provide transparent performance insights. We are really only at the beginning of this journey.
SMG's take: At SMG, we know retail media is exceptional at increasing sales in the short term but is also effective at building brand loyalty and establishing connections with consumers that last well beyond a customer’s initial purchase. For long-term success in retail media, brands and their RMN partners must consider metrics, like customer lifetime value, to understand the true and complete impact of retail media.
Just as we witnessed at Groceryshop, retail media is being viewed as part of retailers’ efforts to enhance the customer journey and add more value to the retail experience. Consumers crave experiences, and omnichannel retail media presents an opportunity to deliver end-to-end experiences in-store, online, and off-site.
“We’re seeing brands use retail data signals to paint the full picture of what the consumer is doing and find moments where they can intercept to add value to the consumer’s life,” said Whitney Jones Rifkin, VP of Client Service, The Trade Desk, during an October 7 panel titled “Pick One: Are We Branding or Selling Today?” featuring Cara Pratt, SVP of Kroger Precision Marketing, and Amy Lanzi, CEO of Digitas NA.
This is the second year in a row that retail media has been a key discussion point at Advertising Week, and we anticipate that focus will grow next year as the industry continues to evolve.
About Connor Perrett
Connor Perrett is a Marketing Manager at SMG x Threefold, where he works with internal and client teams to promote the agency's work with retailers in the North American market. Based in Brooklyn, he joined SMG in 2023 from EnsembleIQ, where he was the Chief Editor of Retail Leader, a B2B publication covering the retail industry. He was previously a reporter at Business Insider. You can probably find him eating a bowl of pasta or at a Broadway show.
About SMG x Threefold
Founded in 2008, SMG x 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 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 Very Media Group.
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