Dive Brief:
- Sam's Club has made real-time, retargeted display advertising available across tens of thousands of sites on the open web through its retail media offering, Sam’s Club Member Access Platform (MAP), according to a company press release.
- The Walmart subsidiary partnered with The Trade Desk and LiveRamp to leverage first-party member data, advertiser data and AI-powered behavioral insights to increase ad effectiveness and personalization.
- The functionality uses real-time data from Sam's Club members that is not available on other retail media platforms in an effort to better serve interested customers and to decrease irrelevant ads.
Dive Insight:
The addition of real-time retargeted display advertising on Sam's Club MAP comes as retailers continue to beef up their media network offerings to capture surging spend in the space. The offering seeks to solve for several issues that plague display advertising and retail media in general.
By using data from Sam's Club members — including exact data on purchase history, demographics, recent purchases of similar items and basket size — the retargeted ads served through MAP offer better personalization by targeting interested consumers who have not yet made a purchase. Sam's Club claims the campaigns also stop serving ads — even when they're not on Sam's Club channels — once they've made a related purchase, solving for an annoyance familiar to anyone who has ever shopped online.
"We’ve been waiting a long time to be able to retarget using the real-time data that Sam’s Club has. This allows us to automate targeting, personalize messaging and create sophisticated media workflows that maximize the efficiency of our campaigns," said Mic Zavarella, vice president of marketing at PepsiCo, in the press release.
PepsiCo and Nestle Purina had previously been working with Sam's Club MAP and participated in the alpha test of retargeting, a spokesperson confirmed via email.
The partnership with The Trade Desk and LiveRamp speaks to several trends in the advertising world, like the use of data clean room technology and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning — specifically, The Trade Desk's KOA Optimization tech — to optimize ad buys. The LiveRamp partnership covers data permissioning and access controls that seek to keep the collaboration safe and secure.
Sam's Club improving MAP comes as interest in retail media continues to surge, despite brands raising concerns about being "reluctant buyers" amid heavy influence from retailers. The move also comes as other retailers, like Lowe's, move retail media operations in-house.
