The IAB introduced new guidelines to enhance measurement across retail media networks (RMNs) this week. The guidelines shall be open for public comment through October 13.
The guidelines shall be welcomed by advertisers and agencies set to extend RMN ad spend, especially if the industry is more standardized. Nearly two-thirds of ad buyers (62%) cited the shortage of measurement standards as a top challenge to continued growth, a new IAB study found. Both the guidelines and the study were released on the inaugural IAB Connected Commerce Summit: Retail Reimagined event in New York.
Why we care. RMNs are attractive to advertisers due to deep knowledge retailers have about their customers. However, advertisers and agencies have to find a way to match across networks and measure the impact of campaigns in RMNs against outside channels as a way to prove the investment is price it.
Personalization and consumer insights. The value of RMNs is clear to brands that don’t have the identical level of purchase data and other insights that retailers have. First-party data for personalization can be harder to return by with more privacy regulations and the phasing out of third-party cookies.
“Marketers have lost lots of signals with third-party cookies and identifiers, so RMNs allow brands to actually bring back personalization and that connection that brands really need to have with consumers, especially on the CPG (consumer packaged goods) side, where brands are beginning to construct out first-party data — but there’s still a protracted strategy to get there,” said Jeffrey Bustos, vice chairman, measurement addressability data with the IAB.
“RMNs provide the flexibility for brands to grasp customer insights, develop messaging and, most significantly, provide closed-loop measurement,” Bustos said. “Obviously it’s getting harder to measure things, and RMNs enable the flexibility to grasp the impact of media on outcomes.”
Guidelines. The IAB collaborated with the Media Rating Council (MRC) to create the IAB/MRCRetail Media Measurement Guidelines. The guidelines concentrate on 4 key areas:
- Transparency and consistency: Clear definitions and methodologies must be the norm, enabling stakeholders to simply compare metrics.
- Accuracy and reliability: Employ robust methodologies and technologies designed to attenuate errors and adapt to evolving landscapes.
- Privacy and security: Comply with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA and implement stringent security measures to guard user data.
- Compliance with industry standards: Align with best practices as established by MRC, IAB, and other industry bodies.
Data accuracy. Key guidelines around data quality and accuracy aim at ensuring advertisers’ confidence in RMN campaign reporting. The guidelines recommend that RMN measurement tools and methodologies are frequently calibrated and validated (annually, at a minimum). RMNs also needs to maintain consistent data collection processes for each internal and audit purposes.
Additionally, RMNs are referred to IAB Tech Lab’s Spiders and Bots List to filter out invalid traffic. RMNs are also encouraged to match data against known benchmarks to discover and proper potential biases and inaccuracies.
In-store measurement. The guidelines cover measurement for digital channels, as well as in-store digital place-based (DPB) environments. For instance, in-store zones have to be established on the physical location as a way to attribute foot traffic and sensor data to specific screens where ads are shown.
While the new guidelines break down how retailers can apply taxonomy and measurement to visual, as well as audio, ads, RMNs are referred to the MRC Digital Place-Based Audience Measurement Standards for further guidance about exposure and ad impressions in physical locations.
Challenges to RMN growth. Nearly 70% of RMN buyers said “complexity within the buying process” was the largest obstacle to the expansion of RMNs, in line with the IAB study of 200 advertisers and agencies who spend $5 million or more annually in RMNs. Additionally, 60% called “transparency” a challenge for RMNs.
Increasing budgets. These advertisers estimate they are going to increase their RMN budget, on average, by 11% this yr over 2022. Advertisers spending between $30 million and $60 million said they’d increase their spend, on average, by 15%.
To fund the rise in RMN spend, brands are reallocating funds from digital platforms, and traditional media non-advertising “shopper/trade marketing,” in line with the study.
Top reasons for RMN promoting. The top reasons that RMN advertisers gave for his or her investment within the networks were:
- Ability to achieve new/incremental audiences (55%);
- Ability to leverage retailers’ first-party data (52%);
- Performance is powerful (e.g. ROAS) (48%);
- Access to highly engaged audiences at point-of-sale (45%); and
- Ability to leverage customer data/knowledge (45%).
Only 28% of those surveyed said that the retailer partnership required the media buy.
Dig deeper: What brands and retailers have to learn about RMNs
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