Ad Tech Insights

Building Better Metrics

The story: Incrementality is more crucial than ever in retail media, according to Zach Darkow, senior director of marketing activation and measurement at The Home Depot. “More forms of attribution and measurement are popping up as advertisers look across different platforms and channels,” he noted. “It’s not apples to apples, so that’s pushing the industry to try and understand the back end of things, which is where incrementality comes into play.” 

With the impending deprecation of third-party cookies, Darkow advises that RMNs focus on organizing first-party data and ensuring proper data governance to fill any gaps in data and measurement. Darkow has also introduced the concept of return on marketing objective (ROMO) to complement traditional return on ad spend (ROAS), as ROMO emphasizes the importance of achieving campaign objectives. 

The takeaway: Marketers can measure incrementality through multitouch attribution (MTA) or marketing mix modeling (MMM); or by using A/B or match market testing, though the latter are less scalable and require extensive analytics. Embracing standardization and transparency, as led by the IAB and new industry guidelines, can foster healthier measurement practices and deliver clearer pictures of campaign impact. As third-party cookies decline, prioritizing first-party data organization and robust data governance is more important than ever. 

READ MORE.

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Extra Industry Insights

• Retailers are partnering with Meta and Google to boost their ad businesses and contend with Amazon, leveraging their data about shoppers to granularly target ads and measure whether they drive sales beyond their own e-commerce websites. 
• These partnerships come from advertiser demand to reach bigger audiences on bigger platforms, and a collective effort to compete with Amazon’s $46B ad business. 
• Acadia retail media team lead, Ross Walker, notes that these partnerships help retailers compete with Amazon without needing to heavily invest in building ad products, “We're in a position where it's expensive to buy tech — it's easier to partner.” 
• Kroger Precision Marketing is pitching advertisers on its data about what grocery shoppers buy and plugging that data into Meta’s AI tool, Advantage+ to target and measure ads. ‍
• Instacart is working with YouTube to let advertisers target ads based on Instacart shopping behavior, with formats like Shorts, pre-roll, and mid-roll across YouTube.

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Kevel Catch-Up

Introducing Kevel Kai: A New Retail Media AI Feature Set

Kai (Kevel Artificial Intelligence) is Kevel’s suite of AI and machine learning technologies that enable performance optimization and drive relevancy, profitability and revenue. Kai is available as part of the Retail Media Cloud^TM, the ultimate SaaS platform for building retail media networks. 

Learn more about the masterminds behind Kai and its two new features in our press release here.

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Keep Learning

WATCH → This Beet.TV interview with Adam Steinberg, Head of Performance at GroupM Nexus, explores artificial intelligence and how it’s making contextual advertising more powerful. 

READ → After weeks of negotiations, The Trade Desk and Yahoo seemingly edge closer in dispute over instream video inventory. 

LISTEN → Danilo Tauro of Uber Advertising gives trends and predictions for commerce media in Episode 80 of The Marketecture Podcast. (Listening time: 47:24).