In this fireside chat, Rohan Karankal (Mondelēz International) and Jessica Wohl (Ad Age) discussed the dramatic changes and disruptions in grocery shopping over the last few years as well as the opportunities in experiential retail, especially in driving impulse purchases. Mondelēz has an ecosystem of communities, which encourages sharing best practices around experiences through thought leaders both internal and external. Rohan shared examples from Mondelēz’s “Elevated Shopper Experiences,” which delivers curated design and experiential solutions in stores. They are currently evaluating a measurement framework which measures the impact of these experiences on both sales lift and brand perceptions for both the brands and retailers.
This panel discussion, moderated by Circana’s Michael Ellgass, discussed the current state and emerging opportunities in retail media, including measurement as well as organizational issues. The following are edited highlights from their conversation.
In providing an overview of retail media’s latest trends, opportunities and challenges for retailers and brands, Michael Ellgass (Circana) shared results from analyses of over 100 CPG studies that looked at channel performance in retail media networks and the halo impact outside those networks. Finding that the total incremental sales impact is often larger than what the retail media can see in their own outlets and that most shoppers are influenced by a variety of channels, Michael presented the nuanced data that supported a combined approach for maximum impact.
Lindsey Woodland (605) and Jes Santoro (Cadent) presented a case study of a big box retailer to demonstrate their standardized, scalable process for cross-platform measurement and reporting. The retailer’s 2020 holiday campaign benefitted from the identification, scaling and targeting of a selected custom-curated audience. Activation within premium inventory involved broadcast, cable and CTV ads served to targeted households. Including CTV in the media plan added many medium and light linear viewers.
Audrey Steele (FOX) introduced this presentation by highlighting the objectivity of the years-long study focused on the relative value of different platforms and impression quality, with the brands involved amassing close to $3 trillion in sales. While many in the industry are focusing on maximum reach, this study looked at sales as the most important measure of impressions, quality and value between media platforms.
Podcasts offer strong value for advertisers as the result of the growing amount of content, audience diversity and high engagement levels, including increased brand recall. Opportunities for monetization of podcast ads have increased and MAGNA expects U.S. podcast ad revenues to reach $2.4 billion in 2023.
Lindsey Woodland, Ph.D. – Group VP of Data Science, 605
Jes Santoro – EVP, Advanced TV & Video, Cadent
Lindsey Woodland (605) and Jes Santoro (Cadent) presented a case study of a big box retailer to demonstrate their standardized, scalable process for cross-platform measurement and reporting. The retailer’s 2020 holiday campaign benefitted from the identification, scaling and targeting of a selected custom-curated audience. Activation within premium inventory involved broadcast, cable and CTV ads served to targeted households. Including CTV in the media plan added many medium and light linear viewers.
Measurement and analysis of the campaign indicated that the retailer achieved their campaign objectives, which included acquiring new customers and competitive shoppers, while defending their base of loyal customers. The campaign’s incremental ROAS was $5. Additionally, peak performance for total visits and unique visitors occurred at four exposures. The highest volume of unique visitors occurred within a week after first campaign exposure.
Key Takeaways
It is essential for advertisers to measure the reach and effectiveness across multiple avenues of ad exposure rather than consider exposures in platform silos. The importance of this approach will increase as media consumption continues to evolve and cross-platform consumption grows.
Understanding which targets can not only be reached but also activated by various platforms results in more effective campaign planning.
Based on this knowledge clients can shift dollars between channels to better optimize their campaigns in real time and prior results can be used to inform future work.
Marketers can sub-target their campaigns by creating multiple targets, based not only on media consumption, but also media responsiveness to improve each targets’ projected ad effectiveness.
An effective causal multi-touch attribution (MTA) approach should provide stable, reliable results that have been researched and tested across hundreds of real campaigns and simulated data to ensure that the approach is yielding accurate results.
Lloyd Darbonne – Senior Director Research, Insights, & Strategy, FOX Corp.
Bill Harvey – Executive Chairman, Bill Harvey Consulting, Inc.
Audrey Steele – EVP Sales Research & Strategy, FOX Corp.
Audrey Steele (FOX) introduced this presentation by highlighting the objectivity of the years-long study focused on the relative value of different platforms and impression quality, with the brands involved amassing close to $3 trillion in sales. While many in the industry are focusing on maximum reach, this study looked at sales as the most important measure of impressions, quality and value between media platforms.
Bill Harvey (BHC) detailed the study’s methodology of implementing a standard multiple regression analysis with ROI optimization using SMI’s real ad spend numbers and Circana’s and S&P Global’s sales spend across the top ten brands in each of QSR, CPG and Auto verticals over nine years of data.
Lloyd Darbonne (FOX) covered how the thousands of iterations of their ROI optimizer selected the media mix that predicted the highest share for each company studied. Concentrating on entertainment (inclusive of TV sports & news, TV cable entertainment, TV Big 4 entertainment and premium digital video TV), the optimizer then measured the optimal allocation for maximum ROI in each vertical. Results across verticals documented higher ROIs with significant reallocations and rebalancing of ad spends in TV and premium contexts.
Key Takeaways
Brands that increased their spend in non-premium digital lost sales and market share, much of it due to misallocation of advertising spend. There are opportunities for 20-40% ROI increases by reallocating non-premium digital dollars to TV.
TV has 2.6x the sales effect of non-premium digital. There is a 14.6% incremental sales lift added by advertising, on top of the baseline 85% sales without advertising. TV generated 69% of the added 14% across the combined three verticals, with non-premium digital at 27%. In all three verticals studied, broadcast entertainment still has a good amount of headroom—increasing share of ad spend will increase sales effects.
Buyer focus on CPM and rush to oversaturated lower-priced media and non-premium digital inventory has served to suppress the sales effects of overall campaigns.
Focusing on ROAS instead of reach, and using standard multiple regression analysis gives advertisers an advantage over slower-moving competitors.
Brian Hughes – EVP, Managing Director, Audience Intelligence & Strategy, MAGNA
Arica McKinnon – VP, Campaign Analytics, Nielsen
Podcasts offer strong value for advertisers as the result of the growing amount of content, audience diversity and high engagement levels, including increased brand recall. Opportunities for monetization of podcast ads have increased and MAGNA expects U.S. podcast ad revenues to reach $2.4 billion in 2023.
Brian Hughes of MAGNA and Arica McKinnon of Nielsen shared the results of a podcast advertising effectiveness study and presented the best practices that increased the effectiveness of these ads, overall, and for CPG, automotive and retail brands, specifically.
The study measured the impact of podcast advertising on key brand lift metrics utilizing an online panel, controlled exposure methodology and a post survey. These results were then compared to Nielsen’s Podcast Norms.
Key Takeaways
Podcasts provide reliable lifts on key brand metrics, including familiarity, affinity, information-seeking intent, purchase intent, recommendation intent and aided awareness, but fine-tuning can create even more value.
Longer creative generally drives higher lifts, but 35 seconds to a minute ads strike the right balance between results and the listener experience.
More brand mentions drive better results.
Host read ads are better for building awareness and driving search.
Custom content enables brands to build awareness due to strong recall.
Pre- and mid-roll placements show comparable lifts, while post-roll has a clear disadvantage.
Podcasts can drive positive results for CPG brands across the funnel.
Auto brands can use podcasts to build awareness and affinity. Sports podcasts are a good fit for auto brands.
Podcasts work well to build awareness and affinity for retail brands.
At ARF SHOPPER 2023, which took place in Chicago and virtually on March 9, the industry’s leading marketers and retailers came together to explore the latest research-based consumer insights, and how they are using this data to understand today’s shoppers, build innovative experiences and brand loyalty. Attendees learned about consumer behavioral shifts, how retail media networks are gaining traction in digital marketing strategies, and the latest shopping trends.
