Retail Media Networks (RMNs) have come a long way since Amazon brought the concept to life back in 2012. Over the past few years in particular the foot has been firmly on the accelerator in terms of the space’s maturity, sophistication, reach and size.
The win-win-win scenario for retailers, brands, and consumers alike has seen the number of RMNs in operation grow from a handful five years ago to over 200 today.
Already accounting for around a fifth of total advertising investment in the U.S., Retail Media is forecast to hit 23.5% of all U.S. digital ad spend in 2025. Tellingly, a Nielsen study of global marketers showed that 70% of respondents believe RMNs to be more important to their 2024 media plan than the previous year.
This increased prioritization of Retail Media is due in part to the rich seam of retailers’ first-party customer data it can provide amidst a tightening data privacy regulatory landscape.
But it’s also partially due to increasing awareness of RMN value to non-endemic advertisers.
What are Non-Endemic Advertisers?
Endemic advertisers use the media inventory of retailers that sell their products or services to reach shoppers close to the point of purchase with a clear intent to buy.
With non-endemic advertisers there’s no immediate connection between retailer and brand. The advertiser doesn’t sell directly through the retailer – financial institutions or automotive manufacturers for example, whose products or services instead are deemed to be in some way complementary to that retailer or aligned with the needs of its customers.
For non-endemic advertisers, it’s all about the data and the reach. RMNs can connect brands with detailed sales and customer profile data, while offering audience engagement opportunities on and beyond retailer dotcoms.
This invaluable insight can help non-endemic brands find hard-to-reach shoppers – but it’s an opportunity only 58% of brands are grabbing. Thousands of brands still have a blind spot when it comes to the non-endemic advertising potential of Retail Media Networks.
If your brand is in this latter group, here are three routes you should consider as a non-endemic advertiser.
It takes a little detective work (well data analysis anyway), but within retailer data – and within their customers’ buyer behaviors – lie multiple indicators of a potential need for a non-endemic brand’s products.
There are connections between a customer purchasing a particular product from the retailer and an increased likelihood that they’ll be interested in the non-endemic advertiser’s offering. They have a heightened need-state.
For example, let’s consider how an insurance company might use retailer data. The company may want to reach people who have recently bought a house in order to sell them home insurance. Historically this has been a tough audience to reach, but there are clues within RMN data.
By investing in Retail Media from either a home improvement vertical or a generalist provider with a large DIY footprint, the brand can pinpoint purchases of furniture, paints, wallpaper or tools – any of which could indicate a recent house move. Similarly, if the same insurance brand wants to offer life insurance to new or prospective parents, retailer data can point the way by connecting the brand with those purchasing items such as cribs or strollers.
By being able to anticipate those with an elevated need-state for their products, brands can reach new, hard-to-find audiences with relevant marketing content.
Where endemic brands would look to add an item to the cart within the retailer dotcom, the non-endemic brand uses RMN data and/or inventory to serve ads directing customers to their own purchase funnels on their own dotcoms.
The more sophisticated RMN reporting becomes, and the more detailed the customer insights they are able to provide, the greater their capacity to provide an abundant new source of high LTV customers.
When producing pen portraits of their most important audiences and their customer journeys, brands typically incorporate multiple characteristics, demographics, buyer behaviors, store and channel preferences, needs, interests and habits.
By seeking out these same characteristics, these high LTV markers, within retailer data, non-endemic brands can enrich their understanding of their existing customer base. They can also use the data overlap, the common characteristics to build new lookalike prospect audiences.
For example, a luxury car manufacturer looking to launch a new model to an expanded, but relevant audience beyond its traditional channels can engage with a Retail Media partner to target shoppers interested in high-end products. From fashion to furniture, cosmetics to cuisine – those willing to invest in luxury in one market have realistic potential in other luxury markets.
Whether using the retailer’s advertising inventory, or simply its data, the non-endemic advertiser can target high potential prospects with relevant content.
The range of niche vertical RMNs and larger scale cross-category Networks provides non-endemic brands with multiple opportunities to carve out new high-value audiences.
It would be easy to think of Retail Media advertising as a bottom-of-funnel performance marketing tactic – particularly for endemic brand advertisers. But for non-endemic brands, Retail Media offers full-funnel functionality.
RMNs are effective tools to drive TOFU awareness campaigns filtered to find hard-to-reach audiences with granular retailer data.
A key reason for this is the proliferation of beyond-the-dotcom content properties and audience extensions many retailers can now offer brands within their media networks.
From video and social to digital-out-of-home, publisher networks and private marketplaces (PMPs), the potential reach from Retail Media has grown almost exponentially.
From Amazon’s stellar line-up of audience extensions (think Prime Video, Twitch, Amazon Music and Fire TV) to Walmart’s acquisition of smart TV manufacturer Vizio – and thousands of examples in between – RMNs can now bring brands unprecedented profile amid entirely new, high value, and often hard-to-find audiences.
There’s little doubt, Retail Media Networks have the capacity to deliver significant gains for advertisers (endemic and non-endemic). One small note of caution, however, is that almost every RMN is different. Each has different strengths, different weaknesses, different media reach, data management and reporting capabilities.
It’s still a relatively new space and while it’s evolving fast, there’s little or no standardization in terms of offering yet. So careful due diligence is required before committing advertising budgets to individual operators.
It’s equally important to be confident that any potential media partner enforces strict data privacy stewardship and regulatory compliance. Brands must be certain that any individual receiving their advertising consented to do so. This level of compliance is pretty much table stakes for RMNs but it’s always prudent to double check data provenance and management.
With the right partners and growing number of networks to choose from, Retail Media has an almost inexhaustible range of options for non-endemic advertisers to find lucrative new audiences.
Get in touch to discover how KINESSO Commerce’s Unified Retail Media Solution can help both endemic and non-endemic brands turn a potential blind spot into a competitive advantage or download our whitepaper below.
