Retail Media is one of the fastest-growing sectors in advertising with 49.8% growth in 2020 compared to the year before. The channel enables marketers to reach consumers with ads as they shop within online stores and is driven by historical purchase data and other strong, first-party signals that online retailers have on their customers. This translates to real results—which is why the channel is growing so quickly.
One of the more compelling storylines of this emerging channel is the growing number of publishers—in this case, online retailers. Unlike the other two leading digital channels such as Paid Search, which has a couple of major search engines, and Social Advertising, which has just a handful of sizable social networks, the number of media outlets in Retail Media is growing. What started with Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Instacart is quickly becoming a crowded landscape of retailers. It will be interesting to see how Retail Media practitioners manage this ad publisher complexity as the channel matures.
How does a marketer correctly allocate budgets, determine creative messaging, and prioritize optimizations across Retail Media publishers?
Certainly, two of the key variables that will drive decision-making for this channel will be:
- The composition of the audience. Is it young/old? What is its gender split? Is it used more in certain parts of the country than others? Do they skew affluent with higher average household incomes?
- Where does the online retailer fit into the lives of its customers? What categories of products does it sell? Why does a user decide to place an online order for one retailer or another? Do customers place big orders or small ones?
Depending on the brand, these two questions will most likely help marketers decide where and how to spend their Retail Media budgets.
Gopuff offers a unique audience for Retail Media
Gopuff is becoming the world’s go-to solution for immediate everyday needs. Through their network of micro-fulfillment centers distributed across the country, Gopuff is able to deliver from their own inventory to customers is less than 30 minutes. Unlike courier services that add on costs for each item, Gopuff offers a flat, $1.95 fee per order and touts quick delivery to get the 2500+ essential items they stock into consumers’ hands—the company’s motto is “Order in seconds, delivered in minutes.”
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gopuff has seen a nearly 90% increase in order volume and a 55% increase in order value through its contactless delivery model. As of March 2021, the Philadelphia-based company raised $1.15 billion in funding which set the company at an $8.9 billion valuation.
“Cofounders Rafael Ilishayev and Yakir Gola were sophomores at Drexel University in Philly when they decided that stocking their college townhouse with snacks and essentials was taking too much time & too many trips to the store on top of balancing school, work, friends & family. So they spent all night drafting mock-ups of the app on the back of their class notes. Three months later, they were delivering those same convenience items from the back of their Plymouth Voyager around campus. The service caught on, the name stuck & now 7 years, 250+ micro-fulfillment centers in 650+ cities and more than 7,000 employees later, our customers are ditching the store to get it Gopuffed.”
Recently, Skai announced an exclusive partnership with Gopuff. Together, through the CitrusAd API, Skai and Gopuff will offer brands the unique ability to reach consumers 24/7 and grow e-commerce through insights, advertising, and cross-channel measurement within a single platform. With this latest retail media expansion, Skai clients can now reach and serve their customers at any time of the day.
“While the adoption of online grocery was catalyzed by the pandemic, it’s clear that this behavior is here to stay. Brands that could typically rely on aisle endcaps need to transition that strategy online and invest in retail media to promote their products to consumers in the virtual store,” said Nich Weinheimer, GM Commerce, Retail Media. “Through our exclusive partnership with Gopuff, Skai looks forward to empowering more brand advertisers as we continue to build in new ways to optimize digital campaigns and promote products where customers are actively making purchases.”
Get ahead of the rapidly expanding Retail Media landscape with Skai
Gopuff is now another online retailer marketers can now manage through Skai’s retail media platform.
Leading brands & agencies rely on Skai for advanced optimization and cross-channel analytics to drive massive omnichannel growth. Skai is backed by robust, world-renowned shoppable media engineering and experts who know exactly how to advise and lead your commerce evolution in the digital era.
Simplify Retail Media with advertising on every retailer that matters, find your optimal mix, and win big with full retail intelligence.
For more information or to see Skai’s innovative set of features and functionality first-hand, please reach out today to schedule a quick demo for you and your team.
