Retail Media Networks have been set-up all over the world. It’s not just the US or Europe – there is lots of innovation in Retail Media Networks in Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand – and Colin Lewis profiles some of them over the next few weeks.
This week with start in New Zealand or Aotearoa – the Te Reo (Māori-language) name for New Zealand.
The biggest name in Retail Media in New Zealand is Warehouse Group (TWG) – the largest retail group in the country – a multi-vertical retail group that consists of The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery and Noel Leeming.
The Warehouse is ubiquitous in NZ and is a general value retailer very much like a Walmart. They sell grocery, clothing, electronics, toys, sports etc. It’s one of NZ’s loved brands and incredibly egalitarian – nearly every adult in NZ will visit a Warehouse store once a month.
Noel Leeming is the consumer electronics brand – similar to Curry’s or Best Buy. Warehouse Stationary is like an Office Max or Staples.
Over the last three years, TWG have invested heavily in Retail Media. Born from what used to be termed, SMF, or Supplier Marketing Funds, it’s since been developed to be a full funnel, automated self-serve or managed service, offering, trading on or offsite and open to endemic and non-endemic brands alike.
According to Alex Lawson, Head of Strategy & Media – Market Media, “From its inception Market Media has been built as a full funnel offering for endemic clients. The advertiser’s goal is always to sell more product and if to achieve that needed off site as well as TWG owned assets to drive that sale, then that was the right way to approach it. Market Media is not a sales house looking to maximise inventory sell through, we’re a marketing agency within a retailer that is looking for long term success for our suppliers – our campaigns are built with that goal in mind. “
The Market Media Advertiser Proposition
Market Media advertisers are able to access The Warehouse, Noel Leeming or Warehouse Stationery account on Meta and Google accounts to run paid advertising on them, both in a promoted post or for Google shopping. Clients can link specific products to those paid campaigns for full closed loop reporting. On the Trade Desk, clients are able to execute co-branded marketing or use The Warehouse Group’s first party data audiences to target.
When the team started to look for retail media tech partners, they noticed that the large, established platforms would not have given the level of development or feature creation that Market Media wanted.
Most platforms were excellent at Sponsored Display or Sponsored Products but not interested in working with Market Media to expand the offering to offsite, instore screens or other functions that they wanted “We weren’t Walmart big, so they weren’t interested at that point!” Lawson quips. So, the business made the decision to partner with Zitcha to deliver the platform Market Media wanted, such as instore screen capabilities and the ability to create offsite activation through integrations with Meta, Google, Pinterest and The Trade Desk.
Market Media leverages Meta’s Managed Partner Ads (MPA) API integration with Zitcha to use Meta’s Shopper Marketing Ads product. This is integrated with The Warehouse Group’s first-party proprietary audiences.
Market Media deliberately choose to operate as a marketing agency – a full managed service as well as self-serve. Transparency and accountability are key, according to Lawson, so clients get access to all their results and activity in a live dashboard available 24/7 via Zitcha.
Digital Instore Screen Project
The biggest project undertaken by Market Media is also one of the hottest areas of retail media: instore digital screens. General Manager of Market Media, Rory McDonald, says that the screens are one of the most significant transformation projects in the last year and describes the rationale behind the digital screens:
- Despite gains made during Covid and investment into ecommerce, distribution centres and marketplaces, TWG is a largely physical purchase business.
- The instore environment is powerful and was being underutilised.
- Bringing screens into that environment was a no brainer with supplier’s keen to activate campaigns at the point of purchase and the power of our audience capture.
McDonald says the team is very proud of the fact that they stood up a digital advertising screen network in The Warehouse and Noel Leeming stores of both freestanding panels and made their NLG TV Walls (the display TV units) into an advertising option. With both of these operating, Market Media have in excess of 3300 advertising panels to use across all stores.
The tech stack to make it all happen was Broadsign used as the instore CMS, which was fully integrated into Zitcha to enable self-service booking and creative management if desired.
The Market Media team took a “crawl / walk / run” philosophy for the screen rollout. They released the screen network in phases, ensuring a smooth customer experience. Today, McDonald believes they are in the “walk” stage – but getting ready to run.
The most recent innovation is the enablement of programmatic buying on screens via The Trade Desk, Hivestack or Vistar, whichever the brand or agency wants to use. They will be testing a programme of screens on end caps to see how they work with other physical instore media and how they can operate non-category locations etc.
The other transformation in the last 12 months for Market Media has been the sales team. The total team has grown 3x and investing into skilled media sales and planning resources, with an additional focus to target media agencies.
The Rise of Non-Endemic
Market Media work directly with existing Warehouse Group suppliers – also known as “endemic” clients – from a full funnel, sales goals perspective. However, the team has been able to build out new propositions in for advertisers who are “non-endemic” to the Warehouse Group as well as agency clients primarily interested in TWG owned assets.
McDonald points out that “Agencies are already buying off site advertising from Market Media, so we need to ensure that we’re able to interact and trade with them accordingly, as they need to trade. Programmatic capability in multiple areas, not just digital out of home, is an essential part of a future focused RMN and something we’re working hard to roll out. “
McDonald continues: “We know that to a non-endemic or agency client we are just another media channel, and we’re fighting for a share of the same budget that TV, digital, audio or OOH are. We approach this with the view that we need to be as accountable, and open as those channels. This is why we didn’t just operate our instore programmatic with a single DSP, but three so that regardless of which DSP an agency used, our inventory was available there. It’s why it was critical for us to establish 3P verification on our screens, because that’s the industry standard. Meeting the agencies where they need and removing friction wherever we can in the journey is crucial to our long-term success. “
The Future for Market Media
The team understands that they are now a media channel and need to act accordingly for non-endemic and agency business, whilst retaining the level of expertise and planning for The Warehouse Group endemic clients.
The future for RMN’s – and Market Media is an evolution to an established media channel within the mix, not something “off to the side” as Lawson puts it.
The team is now playing on multiple fronts, each with specific needs and expectations to show growth and continued evolution. They believe that they cannot afford to only focus on one front or expect all clients and agencies to work with Market Media in a singular manner.
Lawson believes that the future is bright for RMN’s, but only with continued evolution and flexibility: one size in this space most certainly does not fit all.
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