Two ad platforms have improved their retail media offerings for advertisers with partnerships announced today (Jan. 7) at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Albertsons Media Collective, the retail arm of the grocery company, has teamed with TransUnion as part of the launch of an API, while DoorDash has linked with The Trade Desk in a similar move around data, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
Albertsons Media Collective’s new API will let advertisers integrate its campaign performance data into their own measurement models, with TransUnion offering its TruAudience solution to help advertisers compare performance across retailers and channels. The partnership comes as retail media’s growth into off-site channels has made it more complicated for advertisers to measure ROI of their retail ad spend, according to Liz Roche, vice president of measurement and media at Albertsons Media Collective.
“Our latest API offering… [provides] advertisers with a transparent way to understand and measure performance in one place, while also contributing to measurement standardization,” Roche said in a statement.
Such measurement standardization has been an area of investment and development as retail media networks have grown more sophisticated yet also more fragmented. Albertsons Media Collective’s API is now available for all clients and allows for campaign data to be brought into their own systems or that of agency and measurement partners.
TransUnion’s TruAudience solution helps advertisers develop marketing mix modeling (MMM) measurement — a longstanding tactic of marketers that has returned to the forefront as fragmentation and privacy regulation increases. More than half (61.3%) of U.S. marketers are looking to improve their MMM, per an eMarketer survey cited in press materials.
In a related move, DoorDash has partnered with The Trade Desk to connect the local commerce platform’s data with The Trade Desk’s programmatic technology to help advertisers deliver relevant, transparent and measurable campaigns.
As part of the partnership, advertisers will be able to leverage privacy-safe, first-party DoorDash data to target customers based on purchase behavior and other insights across display, mobile, streaming audio and connected TV via The Trade Desk. Then, advertisers can measure the effectiveness of ads via DoorDash’s closed-loop measurement capabilities. All together, the offering is the type of full-funnel solution sought after by advertisers.
“Our collaboration with The Trade Desk provides an accessible, efficient, and impactful way for brands to engage consumers throughout the customer journey, from initial consideration to checkout,” said Toby Espinosa, vice president of ads at DoorDash. “This partnership is a natural extension of our robust product suite, designed to help advertisers optimize campaigns, allocate budgets effectively, and achieve meaningful business outcomes.”
Like the Albertsons-TransUnion partnership, the DoorDash-Trade Desk pact is billed as a way to bring standardization around precision, scale and accountability in retail media, especially in the food and CPG sectors serviced by DoorDash. The platform last year launched offsite and sponsorship ad opportunities for CPG brands alongside other offerings for enterprise restaurants.
DoorDash in Q3 2024 saw net revenue margin 13.5%, up from 12.9% in Q3 2023, a year-over-year increase it attributed to increasing ad sales and logistics improvements. In a call around the earnings, executives said the ad business was growing in a “very healthy manner” and noted its increased interest from CPG advertisers.
For Albertsons, the launch of Albertsons Media Collective’s API comes after the failure of a proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger that was expected to bring new scale to the combined company’s ad business. Retail media maven Kristi Argyilan, who served as senior vice president of retail media for Albertsons Media Collective for more than three years, recently left the company to become global head of Uber Advertising.
