Retail media is primed to be an adland priority in 2024 as networks proceed to proliferate across the space and marketer dollars flood the channel. Ad spending within the channel is forecast to grow 30% in 2024 and eventually make up nearly 1 / 4 (23.5%) of all digital promoting within the U.S., according to a recent report by Advertiser Perceptions.
As options grow for the way and where advertisers can spend, early entrants into the retail media network space are racing to boost and differentiate their offerings. Home Depot today (March 28) hosted its first InFronts, an in-person marketing summit around retail media modeled after Upfronts and Newfronts presentations hosted by traditional and digital media corporations, respectively.
The inaugural event is intended to allow Home Depot to give an inside look to its suppliers — businesses which can be highly connected to the success of the house improvement retailer, unlike in other media channels — because it runs beta tests of its offerings with non-endemic brands.
“As someone who used to buy all of the media for Home Depot, yes, you were partners together with your media teams, but you didn’t necessarily have to know their strategies and the way they are going to attract recent customers and what their biggest area of growth were, you simply wanted really effective products that drove your small business objectives,” said Melanie Babcock, leader of The Home Depot’s retail media business.
At the InFronts event, Home Depot offered insights into customers and across the corporate’s business, marketing, creative and media strategies, together with a road map ahead for retail media. Along with the retail media ad experience, Home Depot also detailed its systems, reporting and measurement capabilities, and the brand new products and partners that it is enlisting to extend the reach of its network.
“It’s an academic moment for that supplier, because as they give thought to investing into retail media networks, where do they need to invest? They want to invest with a retailer that aligns to their very own objectives and is in a growth position,” Babcock said.
Time to the Infronts, Home Depot is also rebranding its Retail Media+ offering, which launched in 2018, as Orange Apron Media. Babcock’s title will shift to vice chairman of Orange Apron Media and Monetization. The effort comes as Home Depot looks to differentiate itself out there amongst not only home improvement networks, but retail media usually, to reach suppliers and CPG marketers.
Last summer, the corporate underwent a “rigorous” branding exercise because it searched for a reputation that will speak to its home improvement core, coming up with lots of of names; the space lends itself to words like “workbench,” “toolbox,” “drill” and other action-based terms. It also keyed in on the colour and performance of its iconic orange aprons that signify helping customers.
“There are 500,000 associates in our stores each day who wear an apron, and we even have apron-wearing days at the shop support center, where we work,” Babcock said. “It unites us under our values and what we stand for, which is service and help.”
What marketers can expect
With its recent name, Home Depot plans to highlight the experience suppliers have when using Orange Apron Media, with less deal with specific ad types and more on the technology, tools and partners that make suppliers’ ad buying easier. The company stood up its on-site, off-site and in-store ad businesses concurrently, and is now looking to unify the experience, whether suppliers use self-service or depend on Babcock’s team for managed service.
As retail media networks look to sync with media partners to improve audience targeting and engagement, Home Depot has side-stepped major media conglomerates to work with Univision. The partnership will allow the retailer to reach each culturally diverse millennial and Gen Z consumers and Spanish-language consumers within the business and skilled contractor spaces.
“We want to extend our reach and extend our ability to get our suppliers in front of those customers,” Babcock said. “We’re going to partner with the most important network on the market, and all the several ad types that they’ve, to extend our reach into this Spanish language customer [base].”
Still in its early days, the connection with Univision involves tests around creating look-alike audiences, and Babcock describes the deal as a singular and ownable opportunity for the corporate. Home Depot is also offering closed-loop measurement that connects ad reach with business objectives, and has arrange a clean room that may help it meet imperatives around consumer data privacy.
While focused on suppliers for its home improvement business, Home Depot is also running beta tests with non-endemic brands to see if its audiences are compelling to other business lines who’re looking to advertise to homeowners and small-business owners. The company reports it is seeing “very positive signs” in tests with financial services, insurance, automotive and telecom brands.
“Home Depot is a reasonably rigorous company,” Babcock said. “We like to test and ensure that things work, the pipes work, the measurement works, the info works [and] we have got the suitable audiences before we go full scale… We’ll have an even bigger offering coming out this summer with more announcements, because I do consider with cookie deprecation, non-endemics could possibly be very thinking about our audiences.”
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