With 24+ million online stores existing globally today, eCommerce has grown to become an integral part of the global economy. According to Statista, retail e-commerce sales amounted to 4.9 trillion USD worldwide, in 2021. The report also forecasted a 50% growth over the next 4 years, reaching about $7.4 trillion by 2025.
Nasdaq estimated that 95% of all purchases will be through eCommerce, by 2040
The pandemic propelled a massive, accelerated shift to digital, defining the digital presence and habits of both brands and consumers. This raging growth has given a small, emerging area of media a huge boost – Retail Media.
What is Retail Media?
Advertising space that is sold on eCommerce websites, apps, and other digital spaces where products or services are also traded. Retail media is majorly transforming the advertising landscape, reshaping the digital advertising world, and making way for new-age, brand-safe strategies like contextual targeting.
As the number of online traders and shoppers increased, it had a direct impact on retail media as the audience size on websites and mobile apps grew multifold, making it a focal point for customer engagement. From category-specific retailers to digital marketplace leaders and grocery chains, everybody is capitalizing on the retail media advertising market, estimating it to rise to a whopping $52.21 billion by 2023 after a banner year in 2021.
According to a survey by BCG in partnership with Google, the retail media market will grow by 25% YoY to clock $100 billion over the next 5 years, accounting for over 25% of total digital media spending by 2026.
Why is retail media gaining this popularity?
What makes it a big hit today is visibility and traceability. It gives brands the power to take their products to consumers, close to the point of sale, making it highly attributable as they can easily track sales and determine ROI more accurately. For consumers, these ads are non-intrusive and relevant to their purchase interests, providing a better overall shopping experience.
For advertisers, this is a great alternative for the cookieless world as it takes away the dependencies on third-party cookies and gives them access to first-party customer data through the retail ad space owners. Advertisers can use this data to create personalized ads that resonate with customers whilst being respectful of their privacy.
Contextual targeting and retail media
The rise of retail media makes one aspect very clear today – marketers are focusing on context-driven sales rather than just reach or frequency. The focal point for marketers and advertisers is truly understanding customers and their purchase intent rather than basing strategies on past purchases or guesstimated target markets.
These are the key factors that make it media a great bet in today’s market.
However, marketers are looking to invest beyond just retailer websites to increase audience scale and get a wider reach. This is where contextual targeting has proven to be the perfect fit.
Contextual targeting delivers all of the benefits retail media provides, sans the retailer specificity. This enables marketers to exponentially expand their range of websites and still deliver contextually relevant ads. The results? Impactful ads that reach the relevant audience at the right time.
With contextual targeting, marketers can display their ads exactly where customers are looking and at the ideal purchase moment, giving them the power to influence purchase decisions through personalized messaging, right from when customers begin product discovery.
Explore contextual advertising with Seedtag and learn more about how we enable leading global brands to boost key metrics and create new-age advertising strategies for the post-cookie world.
