Dive Brief:

• Marketers using Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms will now have access to data on brand and product-level sales results from their shopper marketing campaigns through IRI’s Ansa Measurement Solution, according to a press release.
• The software will provide hyper-local targeting recommendations and optimization based on campaign parameters. 
• The move could help brand marketers drive results for their retailer-specific campaigns on social media, something that has been a challenge to date. The expansion comes as marketers race to figure out how to precisely target consumers as Google prepares to phase out third-party cookies as soon as 2024.

Dive Insight:

Connecting the dots between online ads and retail sales, both online and in-stores, has long been a marketing challenge, one that Meta is trying to address by integrating a tool from IRI, which is a significant repository of product-level sales data across retailers.

The news comes as retailers are themselves monetizing their sales data through media networks offering advertising options to CPG and other marketers, an area that is growing as first-party data becomes more important in advance of Google deprecating third-party cookies. With this partnership, Meta appears to be trying to shore up the advertising capabilities on its flagship products as its user growth stagnates and it fumbles its initial efforts in the metaverse space, which it has tagged as an important area of future growth. Instagram also recently shut down its live shopping feature in order to put more emphasis on its Reels feature, a TikTok look-alike.

Shopper marketing, which sees retailers and brand marketers cooperating on promotions to drive in-store sales, has embraced social media in recent years. Nearly two-thirds of CPG and retail shopper marketers utilize Facebook and Instagram to drive sales, according to data from a Meta-commissioned online survey cited in the release. This suggests the IRI tie-up could be embraced by CPG marketers.  

“Measuring the incremental omnichannel sales impact of retailer-specific social media investments has long been a challenge in the industry,” said Stephanie Pegler, e-commerce marketing director at PepsiCo in a press statement. “The measurement partnership between Meta and IRI enables PepsiCo to understand how its retailer-specific Meta campaigns drive omnichannel sales. This is critically important for informing how to most effectively plan and optimize Meta buys as part of our media mix.”

Social media advertising, on the whole, took a bit of beating last year but could be poised for a comeback in 2023 as marketers look to reign in budgets amid economic uncertainty while platforms put forth new offerings like Meta’s partnership with IRI. The data-focused tool will enable marketers to reach consumers in a way that is more cost-effective, flexible and scalable, a Meta executive stated in the release.