Selecting a Leader in Retail Media

Earlier this week it was announced that Shipt is integrating into CitrusAd’s retail media platform. Here we will dig into why Shipt and many other retail ecommerce sites are leveraging retail media.

CitrusAd’s name has become synonymous with retail media, providing intelligent and cost-effective ad serving for the thousands of brands across a multitude of retail and ecommerce websites and apps globally. Recently, in an independent assessment of the top retail media vendors in the market¹, Forrester Senior Analyst Collin Colburn wrote, “In fact, we find more retailers familiar with CitrusAd the vendor than retail media as a tech category.”

What is it that has retail and ecommerce sites clamoring to ad tech?

Personalized Shopping Experiences

All retailers aim to improve “the shopping experience.” But here, in the world of retail media, retailers are making shopping experiences more personalized for each shopper. It is no longer “the shopping experience” it is “your shopping experience.” No two shoppers, nor their households, nor their needs, nor their carts are alike and because of that, retailers are looking to tailor shopping experiences. Serving a good mixture of relevant product ads to shoppers, not only shows that the retailer knows and understands each customer’s needs, but it cuts through the clutter and allows for products to be discovered by the shoppers that are most likely to purchase which makes it a win for the shopper, a win for the brand and a win for the retailer.

Real-time Reporting for Crystal Clear ROI

Many ads and media positions are purchased by brands and agencies that do not have any form of direct measurement. Yet through ecommerce, advertisers can now get crystal clear ROI for every ad served in real time. The CitrusAd platform utilizes algorithms and the retailer’s first party data for intelligent ad serving to consistently deliver great ROI for brands and retailers with average conversions rates for CPG’s at 60% to 70% and an average ROAS across all categories between 200% and 400%, not to mention the influence online shelf space is proving to have to total online and in-store sales growth. 

Ecommerce Growth

It is no secret that ecommerce grew during the pandemic. Not only did more shoppers learn how to shop online and adapt to the new circumstances, they also learned they could trust online and mobile shopping experiences and benefit from the convenience of ordering from anywhere. This adapting behavior has quickly turned to adoption, whereas shoppers will still continue to shop online. This has retailers paying a lot more attention to omnichannel experiences.

Onsite and In App Monetization

Shipt partners with over 130 retailers to provide an online shopping and delivery service in over 5,000 cities nationwide, offering a multitude of product categories including fresh foods, household essentials, wellness products, office and pet supplies. The facts are well known and speak for themselves, if a brand’s products appear in the top two rows of ecommerce sites like Shipt, they simply sell a lot more products than if they were bottom of page or heaven forbid placed on the second page. Three common retail clichés come to mind: “Location, Location, Location”; “Being in the right place at the right time”; and “Out of sight out of mind.” Reaching shoppers right at the point of purchase is the perfect place to trigger purchases while they are actively in the shopping mindset. This combined with the facts that third party cookies are going away and that other media audiences such as television have become fragmented makes this the perfect time for retailers and ecommerce service providers to become the next digital media success stories with exceptional targeting capabilities.

One for All and All for One

CitrusAd has built a retail ad network where advertisers and brands can deploy and manage ad campaigns reaching multiple retail audiences from one platform. This solves an industry problem of too many platforms by having one easy to use interface for many retailers. By being a part of the network, retailers, individually or as a whole appeal to national brand budgets. While there are other players in the space, CitrusAd has the largest network for grocery retailers (in addition to other categories), which enables CPG brands to achieve efficient ad-buying through effective technology across many retail websites and apps.

Making the Choice

If you are a retailer considering the benefits of retail media you may be interested in the recent, “The Forrester Wave™: Sell-Side Retail Media Solutions, Q3 2021” report - an independent assessment of the top retail media vendors in the market, conducted by Forrester, a leading global research and advisory firm. The report provides an evaluation of sell-side retail media solutions of eight companies across 25 criteria and grouped into three high-level categories: current offering, strategy, and market presence.

CitrusAd was named a “Leader” in the report, receiving the top score in the Performance criterion as well as the Measurement and Reporting criterion. Additionally, CitrusAd received the highest score possible in the Onsite Monetization, Execution Roadmap, Market Approach and Partner Ecosystem criteria amongst other retail media solutions in the report. Click here for complimentary access to the report.

¹ “The Forrester Wave™: Sell-Side Retail Media Solutions, Q3 2021”