Author: The Digilant Team

As summer winds down, the most wonderful (and busy!) time of year ramps right up. Every advertiser knows the importance and challenges of the holiday shopping season — and the 2023 season will be no different. 

There’s good news on the horizon for retailers. The National Retail Federation projects that retail sales will reach between $5.13 trillion and $5.23 trillion this year, a 4-6% growth from last year. On the flip side, getting a piece of those precious consumer dollars will be more challenging than ever. Ninety-two percent of consumers in the U.S. have cut spending on nonessential goods like home decor and clothing over the past six months. 

With more people shopping online, there’s ample opportunity for advertisers to create timely and memorable touchpoints with consumers to move them down the funnel over the three-month season. Keep reading as we break down everything advertisers need to know to prepare for the busy holiday shopping season. 

 

Timing is Everything – Holiday Shopping Starts Early

December may seem far away, but in 2022, 56% of consumers started their holiday shopping in October. Another 35% started in November. It’s never too early to get consumers familiar with your brand and holiday deals. With this in mind, we suggest a three-pronged approach to move consumers down the funnel over the coming months. 

 

1. Late October

Consider heaving up on awareness-focused channels such as advanced TV (CTV/OTT), pre-roll and native video, and audio. At this stage, the messaging and ad creative itself doesn’t have to revolve around the holidays, but it won’t hurt to get your brand on people’s radar.

2. Week of Black Friday & Cyber Monday

In 2022, 196.7 million Americans shopped either in-person or online over these five days. Embrace a heavy-hitting strategy using high-impact ads to draw in consumers flooded with ads and deals during the shopping frenzy. 

Consider one of the following new and emerging ad formats to stand out from the crowd and catch consumers’ eyes:

• Scratch-Off Promo Offers: Create scratch-off cards that reveal special offers, discounts, or promotional codes. 
• Dynamic Product Feed: Utilize an inventory data feed to create dynamic product ads that automatically update with accurate product information, such as title, price, availability, and images. 

3. Mid-November to Mid-December

During the homestretch, focus on your most valuable audiences to drive them further down the funnel. Continue to run conversion tactics, with a significant focus on retargeting your most valuable prospects.

In summary, this year’s holiday shopping season will require a strategic balancing act from advertisers: launch early but plan the long haul strategy. Media buyers should be prepping and launching campaigns in the coming month to capture those early dollars as holiday shopping starts to creep into everyone’s mind. However, a long-tail strategy will be essential to also capture those last-minute purchases made closer to the holidays. 

Looking for more holiday shopping insight? Check out the previous blog, Three Ways To Reach Online Shoppers This Holiday Season, for insights into key media strategies and tactics to move the needle with consumers this year.

 

Have a Holly Jolly Holiday Season with Digilant’s Holiday Shopping Solutions 

At Digilant, we understand the importance of a solid digital advertising strategy to conquer the holiday shopping season and end the year on a high note. With that in mind, our media strategies are ready to create a custom, tailored solution to achieve your brand’s goals. Contact us today to get started building your holiday shopping media plan. 

Ahead of the upcoming holiday season, it’s helpful to look back at 2022 and understand critical patterns and factors that moved the needle for consumers. When analyzing last year’s trends and data, one thing is clear: online shopping continues to take a leading role.

In 2022, consumers spent $211.7 billion online from November 1 to December 31, growing 3.5% year-over-year. Black Friday alone raked in a record $9.12 billion in online sales. While online shopping grows in importance, consumers are also diversifying where and how they shop online. 

Diversified media habits mean more avenues to reach shoppers and more work for advertisers to find the right tactics to reach shoppers. To help navigate the ever-changing digital media landscape, we’ve identified three key strategies you can be sure will reach online shoppers this holiday season.

 

1. Reach Consumers while they Shop Online with Retail Media Networks

Take advantage of targeting shoppers who are actively browsing and shopping online with Retail Media Networks (RMNs). RMNs use proprietary first-party, deterministic data to reach consumers throughout the online buying journey. 

They provide advertisers with high-quality ad placements making the path to purchase quick and seamless. Even better, most retail media networks will allow their data to be used across multiple formats such as connected TV, audio, banners, video, and native. This allows advertisers to reach their audience throughout the day while they continue to finalize their holiday gifts. 

 

2. Consumers are busy, make it as easy as possible for them

The holidays aren’t just a busy time for advertisers, everyone is flooded with events, parties, shopping, planning, and more. It’s increasingly important for brands to make the shopping experience as seamless and personalized as possible for consumers. In fact, 80% of shoppers are more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized experiences.

While not every brand can afford to offer personalized discounts, coupons, and free shipping, consider how you can tailor ads to make your consumers feel valued. Here are some ways we suggest personalizing your ads:

• For businesses with brick-and-mortar locations, consider a hyperlocal approach. Ad copy such as “pick up yours at our Springfield Store location” or “20% off purchases made this weekend at our Downtown Smithfield store” streamlines the path to purchase. Shoppers appreciate a personalized ad experience tailored specifically to them, but it also reassures them that you carry the exact product they are looking to purchase.
• If targeting more than one audience, include the specific audience in the creative. Don’t rely on generic copy and imagery, rather catch their eye with relatable creatives. If you target families, include the proper images or video. If you are targeting Gen Z, use language that speaks directly to them. Slight variance in ad creative can make a drastic difference in catching the right consumer’s attention. 
• Because consumers are shelling out major dollars during this time of year, they’ll be looking for deals and savings wherever they can find them. If your business is able to, offer a discount code or special offer for your audience geared specifically for the holiday season. This helps assure consumers you sympathize with the economic impact the holiday season can have on their wallets. 

 

3. Measure your Campaigns and Tailor Your Strategy Along the Way

The holiday season spans much longer than the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend. With three months of browsing and buying, one of the most important strategies advertisers can implement are quality measurement solutions. 

These tools enable advertisers to track data such as impressions, conversions, in-store foot traffic, online sales, offline sales, and brand lift. With access to live, up-to-date data, you can quickly shift attention and budget toward strategies and audiences of the most value and move away from strategies that aren’t working as well. There’s no use in continuing to invest in a channel or tactic that isn’t seeing the results you need, so a measurement solution gives you the insight to ensure you’re getting the most bang for your buck. 

 

Have a Holly Jolly Holiday Season with Digilant’s Holiday Shopping Solutions 

The right combination of media tactics can make all the difference in reaching consumers during the holidays or missing the mark and losing out to the competition. Interested in learning about how to tailor these digital media strategies to make an impact this holiday season? Our media strategists are ready to create a custom, tailored solution to achieve your brand’s goals. Contact us today to get started building your holiday shopping media plan. 

We live — and marketers work — in an omnichannel world. As the digital landscape becomes more complex, today’s consumers are navigating it seamlessly, slipping from one channel to the next without missing a beat on the goal they’ve set out to accomplish. In fact, an impressive 86 percent of shoppers regularly hop across two or more channels while shopping. 

To consumers, cross-channel activities aren’t given a second thought. But from the marketing and brand experience standpoint, the omnichannel reality is a lot more complicated. Let’s look at what omnichannel success requires in the modern marketing era. 

Table of Contents

• What is Omnichannel Marketing?
• What Is an Example of an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy in Action?
• Why You Should Use Omnichannel Marketing
• Omnichannel Marketing Best Practices

 

What Is Omnichannel Marketing?

In the simplest of terms, omnichannel marketing is an approach to marketing that addresses the customer experience on each channel — everything from desktop browsers and mobile apps to social media, podcasts, and more — as well as how customers transition among channels to make purchases. The importance of this comprehensive approach to marketing — one that prioritizes the consumer journey and maintains consistency across it — cannot be overstated. 

Customers are more likely to remember brands, view them favorably, and make purchases with them after being exposed to an integrated omnichannel marketing campaign. So, what does it take to build and execute such a strategy? Keep reading to learn more.

 

What Are the Four Pillars of Omnichannel Marketing?

While the concept of omnichannel marketing is a grand one, the implementation of such a strategy is, in fact, highly tactical. In general, there are four major pillars that support omnichannel marketing: data and insights, strategic planning, channel selection, and reporting and measurement. Let’s dig into each one in more detail. 

 

1. Data and Insights

The backbone of omnichannel marketing relies on a data-driven, strategic approach to properly identifying, interacting with, and engaging consumers. The end goal is to understand your customers and prospects — particularly as it relates to how and where they shop and engage with content — and to deliver targeted, relevant ad placements, creative, and messaging. 

Proper execution of an omnichannel strategy typically requires both first-party data (what you know directly about your customers) and third-party data (information from outside sources that reveals new dimensions of these customers). However, collecting this data is just the start. Marketers must then put in the work required to interpret and understand what the data means as it relates to real-world behaviors. 

 

2. Strategic Planning

With a solid foundation of audience data and insights, marketers can then go about making a strategic plan for reaching those audiences across channels. A key part of this step is to solidify your budget and prioritize who to target with your ad spend and in which channels. 

Omnichannel marketing is, by definition, a strategy that aims to reach target audiences across the many channels that comprise their customer journey. However, it’s unrealistic to think that a brand can reach all audiences across all channels all the time. This is why the data and insights discussed above are so vital. Approached correctly, they will reveal the most valuable audiences— both existing customers and prospects — for a given brand, as well as their most impactful touch points. 

 

3. Channel Selection

With an understanding of a brand’s target audiences and their customer journeys, it’s time for marketers to decide how to allocate their budgets across channels. A strong omnichannel marketing strategy can include email marketing, social media, search, digital display, digital video, CTV and OTT, out of home, print, mobile, a brand’s own website, affiliate, social influencers, and more. It seems like the list never ends.

The logical question arises: Does my brand need to be present on all of these channels? The answer depends on the brand, its customers, and its resources. While the goal of omnichannel marketing is to create a seamless, unified customer journey across all channels frequented by a brand’s target audiences, it’s important to establish priorities. The goal should be to cover as many channels and platforms as possible, assuming your audiences are on them, but to still be able to do so in an impactful way. 

There are a tremendous number of channels from which to choose, and ensuring a diverse marketing mix is valuable, as it helps engage customers wherever they are in their customer journeys and on the platforms that matter to them. Furthermore, including a variety of touchpoints, platforms, and tactics in your plan can help ensure no single channel becomes oversaturated. Ultimately, however, plans will need to operate within the reality of a brand’s marketing budget, which is why strong data and targeting are so important out of the gate.  

 

4. Reporting and Measurement

Finally, we come to reporting and measurement — as vital a pillar of omnichannel marketing as any of the others, but the one that’s perhaps most likely to be overlooked. Proper reporting and measurement enable advertisers to evaluate the execution of their campaigns in a holistic way to understand which tactics and channels are performing well (and which aren’t). 

Omnichannel marketing is an always-on endeavor, and that means reporting and measurement should be too. By understanding how different channels are performing and interacting with one another, marketers can shift budgets and efforts accordingly, even while campaigns are still live and running. By committing to continual reporting and measurement, marketers can unlock a cycle of continuous improvement that enables greater efficiencies and the ability to test new audiences, channels, and tactics that might be of interest but perhaps weren’t included in earlier planning. Furthermore, proper reporting and measurement enable marketers to identify shifts in consumer behaviors, marketplace realities, and channel performance before they can significantly impact a brand’s omnichannel results. 

 

What Is an Example of an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy in Action?

From a consumer standpoint, we rarely spend time thinking about how we become aware of and start purchasing from a brand, nor do we think about the many ways in which our favorite brands communicate and interact with us. Omnichannel marketing, at its best, is seamless in that regard. 

Let’s consider how a modern fashion brand might employ an omnichannel marketing strategy to provide a unified and personalized experience to its prospects and customers across various platforms and channels.

• Online store and mobile app: The brand has a user-friendly online store and mobile app that offer a wide range of clothing and accessories. Customers can browse the products, add items to their cart, and create wishlists. Their activity and preferences are tracked to provide personalized recommendations.
• Personalized and retargeted display advertising: The fashion brand employs data-driven advertising campaigns across various platforms. Some ads leverage contextual data to reach likely targets. In other instances, a person who recently viewed a specific dress on the website might see retargeted ads featuring that dress on other websites they visit. 
• Social media advertising: The brand also runs targeted display advertising campaigns on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. The ads direct users to the brand’s online store or encourage them to download the mobile app.
• Location-based mobile ads: The brand might also use location-based advertising to send targeted offers and promotions to potential customers’ mobile devices when they are near one of the company’s store locations. 
• SEO and paid search: The fashion brand optimizes its website for search engines to ensure that it appears in relevant search results when potential customers are looking for fashion products. The company also employs paid search ads to attract potential customers actively searching for fashion products online. 
• Video advertising: The brand amplifies its omnichannel marketing strategy by incorporating video ads across YouTube and other online platforms that showcase its latest collections, styling tips, and customer testimonials.
• Email marketing: The company also sends personalized email campaigns to its subscribers. These emails include abandoned cart reminders, personalized product recommendations based on browsing history, exclusive offers, and updates about upcoming sales or new arrivals.
• Social media: The company maintains active profiles on popular social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. It regularly posts high-quality images of its latest collections, style guides, and user-generated content. 
• In-store experience: The brand ensures its physical stores are aligned with its digital efforts. In-store tablets allow customers to browse the online catalog, check product availability, and even place online orders for items that might not be in stock.

In this omnichannel marketing example, the fashion brand leverages multiple platforms and channels to create a seamless and integrated customer experience. The goal is to provide convenience, personalization, and engagement at every touchpoint, ultimately driving customer loyalty and increasing sales. 

As extensive as the above list is, it’s really just a starting point. Additional consumer touchpoints leveraged by the brand could include user-generated content, print, direct mail, OOH and DOOH, TV advertising, chatbots and customer support, loyalty programs and more. 

 

A Real-World Omnichannel Marketing Case Study

Every brand should be thinking about their prospects and customers in an omnichannel capacity. So, what does that look like when it comes to campaign planning, execution, and results? Consider the example of a power tool company that was recently looking to drive sales during two campaign flights — one right before Christmas and one during springtime. To do this, the company employed a mix of full-funnel tactics to create awareness among new prospects and drive individuals to purchase its tools at a major retailer.

With its campaigns, the brand reached potential customers across the U.S. through video, OTT, social media, and display ads. Specific tactics included: 

• Video retargeting: The brand placed a pixel on its landing page and retargeted anyone who visited with a video.
• Pre-roll contextual advertising: The brand placed ads within content categories focused on homeowners, DIY projects, home projects, crafters, and outside yard work.
• Social to display ads: The brand leveraged its existing social assets from Facebook to create display ads in a seamless execution.

The combination of tactics and channels enabled the brand to exceed campaign goals, driving more than 11,000 conversions and a 0.20 percent click-through rate. The results were a testament to the company’s unified omnichannel approach to aligning its efforts with the full customer journey. 

 

Why You Should Use Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing enables a seamless purchase journey for consumers every step of the way. Furthermore, with proper planning and execution, omnichannel marketing allows advertisers to quickly adapt their marketing tactics and advertising campaigns without losing contact with consumers and ensuring continued access to the data and insights needed for continual optimization. 

The importance of omnichannel marketing within today’s highly fragmented digital world cannot be overstated. Consider:

• Increased customer retention: Businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies achieve an average 89 percent customer retention rate, compared to a 33 percent rate for those without omnichannel approaches.
• Higher lifetime value: Customers engaged through omnichannel strategies have a 30 percent higher lifetime value than those who engage through only one channel.
• Consumer demands for consistency: Roughly 75 percent of consumers expect consistent experiences across channels.
• Growth of mobile influence: Mobile commerce has been a significant driver of omnichannel strategies, with more than 40 percent of e-commerce transactions taking place on mobile devices in 2023.

Let’s delve deeper into why omnichannel marketing is so successful in driving improved campaign results, marketing ROI, and customer relationships. 

 

Today, Shopping Is Omnichannel

Today’s marketing must be omnichannel because, quite simply, today’s shopper experience is omnichannel. Consumers no longer adhere to the traditional distinctions between online and offline shopping. Rather, they seamlessly navigate a multitude of interconnected touchpoints. 

As technology has advanced, the concept of omnichannel has redefined the way consumers interact with brands. From browsing products on mobile apps and websites to engaging with brands on social media and exploring physical stores, the modern shopper expects a cohesive and unified experience. An omnichannel approach ensures that customers can effortlessly transition among platforms, digital interactions, and in-person experiences while enjoying consistent branding, personalized recommendations, and convenient options tailored to their needs, like click-and-collect or home delivery. 

 

Omnichannel Data Provides a More-Complete Understanding

A properly executed omnichannel marketing strategy provides brands with a unified 360-degree view of how consumers engage with them across every step of the customer journey. Importantly, the data and insights gleaned from an omnichannel marketing approach serve to improve brand experiences that extend well beyond just marketing and advertising. Customer engagements, transactions, and feedback provide valuable information that can help a company improve its customer service, technical support, brand initiatives, and even its product design. 

 

Omnichannel Marketing Improves Personalization

Research has shown that 80 percent of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences, and as younger generations acquire more buying power, that imperative becomes even stronger. Omnichannel marketing, given the more comprehensive approach it takes to understanding and engaging customers and prospects, enables brands to better customize their efforts to individual consumers based on where they are in their journey, the product they’re seeking, and the relationship they have already established with the brand. 

 

Omnichannel Marketing Best Practices

Omnichannel marketing requires a significant amount of planning. Here’s where marketers need to be focusing their efforts: 

 

Have a Deep Understanding of Your Customer’s Journey

Understanding the customer journey is paramount to achieving success in omnichannel marketing. By comprehending the intricate path a customer takes from awareness to purchase and beyond, businesses can tailor their strategies to align seamlessly with each touchpoint. This knowledge empowers advertisers to deliver consistent messaging, relevant content, and personalized experiences, regardless of the channel or device a customer uses to engage a brand. 

In the dynamic landscape of omnichannel marketing, a deep comprehension of the customer journey serves as the compass guiding advertisers toward building enduring relationships with consumers and achieving their goals. By harnessing the right data and insights, businesses can identify customer pain points, optimize transitions, and ensure a cohesive narrative that resonates with customers. This ultimately helps build trust, foster loyalty, and provide the convenience and satisfaction that modern consumers demand. 

 

Pick the Right Channels

Omnichannel marketing doesn’t mean being everywhere. It means being where your customer is — and ensuring your messaging and image are consistent in those places.

Selecting the appropriate channels for an effective omnichannel marketing strategy demands a strategic approach. Begin by understanding your target audience and their preferences. Research which platforms they frequently use and how they engage with content. At the same time, analyze your product or service to determine the best opportunities to showcase its features. Likewise, consider the nature of your brand message; some channels are better suited for visual content, while others excel in delivering in-depth information. Choose wisely. 

 

Stay on Top of the Data

When a brand is running different creatives across different channels, the data begins to pile up quickly. Before you even get started with these campaigns, be sure to outline a plan for data collection, organization, integration, and optimization. With multiple incoming data sources, it’s easy to get lost quickly in an avalanche of spreadsheets. Selecting a data analytics solution that works for your brand will help avoid this fate.

Be sure to collaborate across departments to ensure a holistic approach that aligns with your brand’s business goals. Continuously monitor channel performance and adapt based on results to focus resources on channels that yield the highest engagement and conversions. In the end, a meticulous blend of audience insights, campaign results, and data-driven decisions will allow your omnichannel strategy to thrive.

 

Hire an Expert If You Can’t DIY

Omnichannel marketing is not for the faint of heart. If you don’t have a team that can make all the steps of omnichannel marketing a priority, you’re better off not doing it all. Hiring experts makes sense for teams that don’t have the time or expertise to connect the dots across the many touchpoints of the customer journey.  

Are you ready to unlock the full power of strategic omnichannel marketing for your brand? We’re here to help. Let’s talk about what Digilant can do for you. 

The 2023/24 NFL season kicks off Thursday, September 7th with the Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Detroit Lions. After the 2022/23 season saw an average 16.7 million viewers per game, advertisers are wise to use in-game TV ads to reach fans. But, if big-budget TV ads are out of reach for your brand, fear not. 

Today’s fans are omnichannel viewers. They’ll scroll through social media while watching games, subscribe to players’ podcasts, and browse in-game analysis or post-game highlights on their phones. All these actions provide ample opportunities for brands to create relevant and memorable interactions.

With all these new channels, it may feel overwhelming to decide where to begin. Ahead of the 2023/24 NFL season, we’re helping advertisers create a winning strategy by looking back at key trends and media habits in the 2022/23 season. This gives advertisers insight into where they can reach their audience in the coming months as they tune into football games or NFL-related content.

 

The Impact of the Hollywood Strike on TV

Before we jump into key trends, it’s important to note that this NFL season will launch at a unique time in television history. As the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA remain on strike, TV networks will eventually run out of new content to premiere. 

A gap in new content would seemingly lead to fewer consumers watching TV. However, experts are confident that consumers won’t stop watching. Rather, they’ll simply shift their viewing habits. Two genres unaffected by the strikes are reality TV and live sports. These genres are poised for significant viewership in the coming months—just in time for the NFL season.

 

Key Trends from Last Season and Their Impact on the 2023/24 NFL Season

 

Amazon Prime Video Coverage of Thursday Night Football

To keep up with more people streaming TV than watching cable or broadcast television, major broadcasters offer game coverage via their respective streaming platforms like NBC using Peacock, for example. In fact, Amazon was the first to test a streaming-exclusive broadcast. 

Last season, Amazon made an inaugural run covering Thursday night NFL games on its Prime Video streaming service. While it fell short of traditional broadcast viewership, their regular season coverage still delivered an impressive 9.58 million average viewers per game.

Going into this year’s season, Amazon made a “litany of updates to its ad services,” to entice advertisers. Most notably, advertisers can now “run audience-based creative…using Amazon insights to serve different creative to different users all in the same ad break,” according to Amazon Ads VP/Global Sales Alan Moss. Additionally, to give brands the same reach they’ve come to expect with linear TV, advertisers are “promised the potential to extend ad buys within Amazon to make good on any rating shortfalls.”

 

The Power of the Second Screen

In 2022, 49% of viewers used two or more screens while watching football. Sixty-nine percent of viewers used a second screen — typically a mobile device or laptop — to find more information about a product or service after seeing an ad. 

Brands have a great opportunity to align their ads with NFL-related content using contextually placed display, video, or social media ad units. With NFL-specific ad buys, your message appears within contextually-relevant publishers alongside content such as: 

• Betting/odds predictions
• Opinion & expert analysis
• Key storylines throughout the season

Because consumers are viewing these ads on mobile or laptop devices, advertisers can utilize ad creative that drives them further down the funnel. Incorporating action-related content encourages consumers to click to learn more, driving them to your website.

 

Audience Reach Goes Beyond the Field as NFL Podcasts Grow 

Since 2021, just under 900,000 new podcasts have launched. Nearly half of U.S. consumers (42%) are monthly podcast listeners, while more than a quarter (26%) listen weekly. 

Every industry has seen an influx in podcast content as the value of this media form has become increasingly obvious. Sports — specifically the NFL — are no different. In 2021, the NFL teamed up with iHeartMedia to launch the NFL Podcast Network. This partnership included “the distribution of NFL Media’s existing podcasts, as well as the co-production and distribution of two dozen new original podcasts… focusing on NFL history, inside access, and more.”

Additionally, networks across the industry — Barstool Sports, Wave Sports + Entertainment, and LockedOn — continuously add new content to the mix as players, teams, coaches, and analysts throw their hats into the podcasting ring, growing their audience, reach, and influence all while monetizing their content.

As advertisers look to the upcoming season, podcasting provides a great outlet to reach fans beyond Thursday, Sunday, and Monday game schedules. With a host of targeting options — show, content, genre, publishers —advertisers can reach their specific audiences as they tune into NFL content throughout their week. 

 

Stay Flexible and Tuned in to Trending Moments

As the NFL season approaches, one of the best tools advertisers can incorporate is to stay flexible and ready for whatever may come their way. Think back to the 2013 Super Bowl. No one could have predicted a stadium-wide blackout during the halftime show. But, Oreo’s fast thinking “you can still dunk in the dark ” post garnered them 525 million earned media impressions

Having a solid strategy in place at the start of the season — incorporating some of the channels and strategies above — ensures flexibility to jump in on trending conversations and critical moments in the season. 

 

Digilant’s Solutions to Reach NFL Fans

It’s never too late to add football and NFL-related ad buys into your media strategy. Digilant has custom, data-driven NFL and Football omnichannel packages at the ready to help you score big with fans this season. Contact us today to get started.

For years, media buying centered on the idea that only people interested in a specific industry or product would visit certain websites. The publisher or site itself had to contextually align with the topic of your ad – otherwise known as endemic advertising placements.

As consumer data and audience insights have evolved, advertisers have begun to view ad placements how they view consumers — multifaceted. We now know that ads don’t need to only appear against certain topics, categories, or content. We can use targeting and data analytics to reach the right consumer, no matter where they browse. This shift has positioned non-endemic retail media advertising at the forefront of media buying.

So, if you’re wondering which tactic – endemic or non-endemic advertising – is suitable for your brand, keep reading as we’ll dive further into what these terms mean, their benefits, and how to incorporate them into your media playbook.  

 

What is Endemic Advertising?

The term ‘endemic’ is defined as native or natural to a specific environment or its surroundings. When taken in the context of advertising, it refers to ad placements that are contextually relevant or native to the market in which they are placed. 

This is an especially fruitful tactic when buying ad space within retail media networks (RMNs). Suppliers —  whose products are available on the retailer’s website, pay for ad space within the retailer’s network (website, app, emails, etc) —  to promote their products within the customer shopping experience. 

 

How Endemic Retail Media Advertising Works

Retail endemic advertising is the primary format by which ads are bought and sold within RMNs. Take Walmart’s DSP, for instance. Brands who sell their products at Walmart gain access to exclusive first-party ‘Walmart Connect’ data and in-market audiences (Walmart Connect) to reach shoppers at every stage of the shopping journey. They provide premium behavioral and audience data for brands to target consumers, such as previous buyers or in-market shoppers. 

Additionally, this exclusive partnership gives brands access to premium endemic ad placements within the shopping journey. Brands can highlight their products at the top of search results on Walmart.com or use sponsored product carousel ads within the Walmart app, to name a few examples. The ad formats themselves lend to a simple path to purchase with features such as ‘add to cart’ and ‘buy now’ highlighted directly within the ad.

As consumers have diversified where and when they shop, RMNs have stayed in step, offering ad placements beyond their websites and apps. Walmart, for example, offers endemic advertisers opportunities to advertise across their social media pages, across their email marketing, or with in-store displays. 

Endemic advertising’s structure is simple yet effective. Shoppable ad formats directly within retailers’ networks enable brands to reach active shoppers interested in their products with straightforward click-to-purchase formats. 

 

Benefits of Endemic Retail Media Advertising

The benefits of endemic advertising for advertisers are rooted in the system’s structure. Brands can access exclusive ad placements to connect with consumers while they are in an active shopping mindset. It enables them to create more relevant ad campaigns tailored for shopping audiences. 

One might wonder why retailers are willing to display ads as they might distract from the shopping experience. Simply put: offering ad space across the network provides an additional revenue stream beyond retail sales. However, the benefits of endemic ads are more than an opportunity to drive dollars.

Shopping is inherently a discovery process; consumers seek new products to try or compare to others. Because these ads use first-party audience targeting, the retailer knows the consumer will be interested in the brand or product. So, the suggested products and ads tailored to individual customers create a personalized, relevant shopping experience. Happy consumers are always a win for retailers. 

 

Amazon’s Shift to Non-Endemic Retail Media Advertising

Traditionally, ad inventory on Retail Media Networks (RMNs) was exclusively available to brands selling their products or goods on the respective retailers’ sites. Since its advent, brands and retailers have benefited from this highly successful and symbiotic relationship. This is why industry experts were thrown a curve ball with Amazon straying from the mold. 

During the Amazon ‘Unboxed’ Conference in October 2022, the eCommerce giant announced that non-endemic brands could start purchasing sponsored display ads on their website. With solutions at the ready, Amazon solidified its ambition to expand its advertising services beyond CPG and endemic clients. 

This announcement marked a significant shift within RMNs, opening a whole new world of opportunities for advertisers who don’t sell products or services on retailer websites. 

 

What is Non-Endemic Retail Media Advertising?

Non-Endemic retail media advertising refers to using retailer ad space to promote a product or service not sold by the retailer by identifying attributes of a retailer’s main or best customers. The retailer can then sell ad space on their website to non-competitor brands whose audience overlaps or mirrors theirs.

 

How Non-Endemic Advertising Works and its Benefits 

GoPuff, a food and consumer goods delivery company, allows advertisers to reach consumers using sponsored product ads and product features in promotions.

While sponsored products and product features are better suited for endemic advertisers, the company recently expanded its advertising capabilities to appeal to non-endemic advertisers. Companies that don’t sell products within the GoPuff platform can now target the platform’s 2.6 million active users with “ads at checkout.”

The key to successful non-endemic advertising is to find considerable overlaps in the audience base. For GoPuff, Hulu was the perfect partner for a launch campaign. GoPuff’s core audience group consists of males, between 25 and 34 years of age, living on their own or with roommates in major cities throughout the US. While GoPuff doesn’t offer TV streaming services, this audience overlaps perfectly with the cord-cutting demographic Hulu works to convert to subscribers. And so far, these platforms are seeing success, with an engagement rate of 5% during the first month of the partnership.

This approach presents GoPuff — and other retailers — with valuable opportunities.Because GoPuff doesn’t offer the service, it runs no risk of lost business. However, by enabling non-endemic advertisers to purchase its ad inventory, GoPuff diversifies its revenue stream with online ad revenue. As for non-endemic advertisers, they reap all the same benefits of endemic ads alongside the ability to access previously unavailable inventory. This helps diversify their digital marketing strategy to reach shoppers during every stage of the buying journey. Furthermore, non-endemic retail media advertising enables brand discovery for consumers, opening doors to new companies, products, and services that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. 

 

Digilant’s Endemic and Non-Endemic Ad Solutions through Premier Retail Media Networks

Endemic and non-endemic retail media ads provide advertisers with excellent opportunities to get their products or services to the right audience at the right time. Furthermore, they’re a powerful solution to engage with consumers today and in a cookieless future.

 If you’re interested in learning more about these retail media advertising opportunities or access to retail media networks, we’re happy to chat.

Holiday shopping doesn’t result solely in little brown paper packages tied up with strings. 74% of Americans would prioritize travel and experiences over traditional wrapped presents for gifts. Recent data suggests consumers are backing this intention with action as 47% of Americans made holiday travel plans in 2022. Additionally, those who planned to travel spent $2,441 over the holiday season, upwards of $1,000 more than the average consumer.

With the peak holiday travel days just around the corner, advertisers are busy honing and solidifying their strategies to capture their consumers’ attention and dollars. While consumers brainstorm destinations, compare prices, and browse different travel accommodations, reaching them with strategic ad placements, formats, and messaging that speak to where they are in their customer journey is essential. To help travel advertisers this holiday season, we’ve put together a three-step media plan encompassing the top tactics and strategies to reach Americans before they hit the road, sky, and sea.

 

Stage 1: August to September

Reach your audience across all channels

As summer comes to a close, consumers aren’t quite ready to book their holiday trips. However, it’s still essential for brands to remain top of mind. Use these pre-booking months to heavy up ads across all channels with an omnichannel approach. This is the smartest and most effective way to ensure you reach travelers as they switch between channels and devices. 

As consumers incorporate more and more devices into their everyday lives, it can be difficult to know what channels work best. As a starting point, we recommend the following four high-value channels to help our clients reach their audience:

1. Advanced Audio and Podcasts: U.S. consumers spend ⅕ of their daily digital media time with digital audio, totaling 1 hour and 43 minutes of listening per day. This gives advertisers a great opportunity to reach consumers even when they aren’t looking at a screen, integrating your brand in between their favorite music or podcasts. 
2. Paid Social: Consumers are increasingly leaning on social media as a search engine tool,so much so that approximately 40% of Gen Z prefer TikTok or Instagram to Google when researching places to go. Delivering captivating ads at the awareness stage ensures you stay top of mind with consumers as they casually browse for travel inspiration across popular social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest. 
3. Mobile: Mobile is edging its way toward being the most used device for consumers. In 2022, consumers spent upwards of 5.5 hours every day browsing their devices. There are ample mobile-first solutions — geofencing, in-app inventory, mobile-rich creative — that you can lean  on during these months to ensure you stay top of mind with busy consumers. 
4. Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH): What more timely way to reach travelers than while they are on the road? DOOH inventory is constantly growing, giving advertisers powerful opportunities to reach consumers while they are in travel mode. Consider investing in ad placements where consumers are already in a travel mindset such as at airports or EV charging stations (great for reaching road trippers!).

 

Stage 2: October to Early November

Catch Consumer Attention with Engaging Creatives

This timeframe marks the most essential period of the holiday travel season. Consumers are no longer browsing but ready to buy and book. During these critical months, eye-catching creatives will help differentiate your brand and stand oute this holiday season. 

Consider leveraging high-impact ads as engaging creative formats will drive viewability and engagement across all screens, like:

• Quizzes
• Interactive map & directions
• Weather triggered ads
• Coupon Download

 

Double Down on Top Performing Channels

The omnichannel tactics mentioned in Stage One can help your brand remain top of mind with consumers in pre-booking months. However, data and analytics from those campaigns will also be of great value during Stage Two. 

A look back at the top-performing channels and tactics during August and September can help identify which channels were best at moving the needle among consumers.  At crunch time, you’ll already have insight on where to shift campaign budgets to drive success.

During these key timeframes, continue to track campaign performance and measure ROI to ensure you’re using the best tactics to reach consumers and getting the most bang for your buck.

 

Stage 3: Mid-November to December

Leverage Smart Data to Reach Top Audiences

There’s always time to win last-minute dollars. As consumers book last-minute travel, consider focusing campaigns on retargeting consumers who have interacted with your brand most. 

During this hyper-competitive and quick-moving time of year, smart data partners ensure you effectively and efficiently reach your most valued target audience. As timeliness becomes hyper critical, consider using the following data types to hone in on specific audiences. 

• Purchase or transactional data: This data is built from consumer-consented, real-world, behavioral-based spending insights such as merchant category, frequency of spend, spending amount, time period, and offline vs. online spending. Leverage these third-party segments to ensure your advertising efforts reach those most likely to be interested in your travel products and services (i.e. consumers who have flight bookings, hotel stays, rental car reservations, etc.)
• Booking Data: Access close to one billion monthly unique traveler profiles across more than 200 of the world’s top travel brands. This premium global travel data and traveler intelligence uses loyalty programs and booking data to reveal travel patterns, trends, and behavior that brands can then use to target in-market travelers.
• Location data: A great tool for experience, activity, or restaurant brands, location data allows you to target consumers before they arrive at a location, while they’re at a location, and after they leave a location. When a prospective customer is physically close to your location, you have a much better chance of persuading them to purchase from you.

 

Don’t Delay! Consumers are Already Booking Holiday Travel

To take advantage of competitive pricing, experts advise travelers to book their travel at least two months before their intended departure date. With just under three months to Thanksgiving, advertisers are in the essential timeframe to reach consumers while actively researching their upcoming plans.

Digilant’s Digital Advertising Solutions 

We understand the holiday season can feel overwhelming as advertisers work to win the attention and dollars of travelers. Our team of expert media strategists is eager to create a custom plan built toward reaching your specific audience at every stage of the customer journey. Contact us here to get started today.