Kroger debuts private ad marketplace for CPGs

Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM), the retail media business of The Kroger Co., has launched a private programmatic advertising marketplace for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands and marketers.

Called the Kroger Private Marketplace, and powered by Kroger’s 84.51° data analytics arm, the new service enables CPG brands and ad agencies reach shoppers by applying Kroger audience data to programmed campaigns within their preferred ad-buying platform, KPM said Wednesday.

Advertisers tailor their audiences to match campaign objectives using targeting science available via the new private marketplace, whose platform “pre-optimizes” audiences to help achieve business goals, Cincinnati-based KPM explained. For example, to drive conversions, the targeting science will enable brands to reach relevant households seen as delivering the strongest sales impact. According to the company, these activations have boosted penetration into new and lapsed households, with at least three times more sales than the average consumer.

The Kroger Private Marketplace gives advertisers self-serve access to targeting solutions and audience science to zero in on relevant households; retail performance metrics including sales lift, new buyers and household penetration; and quality controls such as verification and brand safety tagging. KPM noted that the marketplace also safeguards consumer data via a “deal ID” that enables appropriate programmatic use while providing CPG marketers the flexibility to activate across platforms.

Related:Kroger 84.51° names Milen Mahadevan president

“We built The Kroger Private Marketplace to be flexible for agencies while protecting the privacy of our shoppers,” Cara Pratt, senior vice president at Kroger Precision Marketing at 84.51°, said in a statement. “You design the audience, choose the measurement criteria, set the safety standards and activate in your tech stack. We’re setting the bar for the future of programmatic media.”

KPM and 84.51° leverage the huge, rich stores of data amassed from The Kroger Co.’s position as the nation’s largest supermarket company, with about 2,800 stores, vast digital properties, millions of daily transactions, and broad technology and analytics capabilities. Annually, Kroger serves 60 million households nationwide.

The Kroger Private Marketplace is designed to make buying easier and offer advertisers more control over their campaigns, enabling them connect with the most relevant consumers online, using their own digital service provider of choice, and then optimize performance against actual retail sales, according to KPM.

Related:Kroger gives CPG advertisers more sales visibility

“We’re still in the early days of seeing e-commerce disrupt shopping habits,” Pratt added. “This is an important time for brands to leverage retail insights to influence new shopping behaviors. Kroger’s private marketplace reaches relevant households and empowers teams to optimize campaign performance against actual business outcomes.”

International advertising, marketing and public relations firm Publicis Groupe participated in the alpha tests for the Kroger Private Marketplace and helped to shape the offering for its clients and the industry.

“Brands are looking for ways to tap first-party retail data and reduce ad waste,” according to Helen Lin, chief digital officer at Paris-based Publicis. “The Kroger Private Marketplace uses retail sales data to unlock new optimization levers for programmatic buyers, while still giving them the flexibility to manage the campaign in our existing tech stack.”

Kroger unveiled the KPM cross-channel media solution in October 2017 as a way to develop more relevant customer campaigns across its digital ecosystem. Powered by Kroger’s loyalty program, KPM offers CPG companies advertising tools to reach potential customers as well as track conversion to gauge success. The 84.51° unit was formed in 2015 after Kroger acquired the rest of customer data science firm dunnhumby, its joint venture with U.K. food retailer Tesco. Today, 84.51° leverages first-party retail data from nearly one in two U.S. households and more than 2 billion transactions, Kroger said. The unit includes 84.51° Insights, 84.51° Loyalty Marketing and KPM.