Dive Brief:

• Lord & Taylor is partnering with InMobi Commerce to set up a retail advertising network, the martech company said in a release.
• The media network will be a full-funnel platform that will include shoppable videos that will link product discovery from social platforms back to Lord & Taylor’s owned channels.
• Lord & Taylor’s addition of a media network comes as the digital retailer is looking to broaden its consumer base by expanding into home, accessories, travel and beauty categories in a bid to provide “obtainable luxury” for shoppers.

Dive Insight:

Lord & Taylor's move into the retail media space is an attempt by one of the country’s oldest department store brands — established in 1826 and now a “digital collective”  emerging from bankruptcy — to remain relevant and viable in the 21st century. Using InMobi Commerce’s platform, the company is hoping to create a full suite of retail media experiences, including sponsored product and video advertising, to improve consumers’ discovery process and the company’s e-commerce experience. 

Lord & Taylor relaunched as a digital-only brand in the spring of 2021. In September of this year, the brand launched a digital-first campaign showcasing its accessible luxury positioning. The retailer can leverage InMobil’s AI platform to help advertisers streamline campaigns with a solution that lets them select budget, ROAS goals and campaign duration then provides real-time reporting on how their campaigns are driving brand awareness and sales. 

Retail media has become a go-to channel for companies looking to diversify their revenue streams and increase their ability to reach consumers as captive audiences. The channel is now estimated to represent 11% of total advertising spending globally and GroupM forecasts ad revenue for retail-based companies will grow nearly 15% this year to $101 billion and reach $160 billion by 2027. 

With that kind of money coming in, numerous companies that own a brick-and-mortar store, e-commerce website or mobile app are preparing to create a network. The success of retail media networks, in fact, is inspiring other, non-retail-sector companies to create their own media networks. 

The interest is driven by the prospect of creating closed-loop media channels in which companies can use their first-party data to create better-targeted, more accurately measured advertising campaigns to captive audiences at the point of sale. 

Yet, as the channel has grown, tensions are arising amongst traditional advertisers — in particularly CPG companies — that the retailers are creating walled gardens in which marketers feel they must play or risk losing out elsewhere in the retailers’ ecosystems, such as maintaining or getting valuable shelf-space in the brick-and-mortar outlets or preferential placement on e-commerce sites.