Lowe’s Cos. Inc. has added a brand new dimension to its retail media network capabilities, working with technology company Vibenomics to enable it.
The brand new retail media network technology focuses on in-store ads. Lowe’s will leverage it to make use of audio ads in its all its owned and operated store locations.
Early results from brands using this retail media promoting technology showed an incremental increase in sales and return on ad spend, Lowe’s general manager and head of retail media John Storms told Digital Commerce 360 via email.
“We designed our portfolio of omnichannel promoting solutions to achieve home improvement customers at every step of their shopping journey,” Storms said. “Our promoting starts from the purpose of inspiration through social channels like Pinterest and Meta, to the purpose of conversion through Lowes.com and our latest in-store audio in partnership with Vibenomics.”
The Lowe’s marketing team is “rebranding” its retail media network, vice chairman of selling Bill Boltz told investors within the retailer’s earnings call for its fiscal second quarter.
It’s moving “to an easier platform where we help our brand partners meet a big selection of selling objectives from performance on shelf and latest product launches to seasonal promotions and multiproduct sales,” Boltz said.
Lowe’s is No. 11 within the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s rating of North America’s largest online retailers by annual web sales. Digital Commerce 360 categorizes Lowe’s as a Hardware & Home Improvement retailer.
Lowe’s adds Vibenomics ads to its retail media network
Lowe’s launched its retail media network in 2021. Since then, the corporate said, it has grown to serve ads for greater than 300 home-improvement brands. Lowe’s media network promoting is on the market for the retailer’s current vendor partners, Storms told Digital Commerce 360.
In March, Google announced a retail media solution in partnership with Lowe’s. The beta uses Google’s Search Ads 360 product to facilitate retail media campaigns. It extends advertisers’ reach to latest third-party channels beyond the retail media network’s owner.
“Our partnership with Google’s Search Ads 360 is a crucial step in expanding our media network’s offsite capabilities,” Storms said. “We’re using a managed service model today, but we’re on the journey toward self-service options for our brand partners to make it even easier to run campaigns in the longer term.”
Meanwhile, the brand new technology that Vibenomics provides Lowe’s specifically focuses on the retailer’s stores and own media network. Storms told Digital Commerce 360 that audio ads will help Lowe’s higher reach its in-store shoppers.
“With a big mixture of DIY and Pro customers visiting our stores, in-store audio was a crucial expansion to our portfolio of omnichannel promoting solutions,” Storms said. “Access to Vibenomics’ in-store technology helps us higher reach in-store shoppers by serving relevant programmatic audio advertisements during a critical time in the shopper’s shopping journey.”
Attributing sales to audio ads
The audio ads Vibenomics technology provides deal with impressions-based buying and programmatic activation. It’s much like radio ads, said Paul Brenner, senior vice chairman of retail media and partnerships at Vibenomics. A key a part of his role is integrating the work Vibenomics’ parent company, Mood Media, does with display screens and audio into retail media networks.
“It’s a one-to-many audience,” Brenner told Digital commerce 360. “Really, the one way which you can attribute sales is thru a control-test scenario.”
That features choosing a control group of stores, testing for feasibility in comparable locations with similar footprints and promotional calendars. And Vibenomics can typically goal times of day where impressions are at their best.
“The perfect targeting that we offer is day of week, hour of day, heavy up on impressions,” Brenner said.
Second to that, he said, is targeting based on planning. For instance, a retailer distributing gardening products might need to goal stores within the southeastern United States in February, when spring starts within the region, after which move north as spring starts in areas just like the Midwest.
The goal, Brenner said, “is to bring the programmatic impression-based models to the venue-specific stores.” The in-store impressions from Vibenomics audio ads inform the Lowe’s retail media network. And so they achieve this by allowing Lowe’s and Vibenomics to measure in-store impressions and audiences in a way that makes them comparable to digital impressions and audiences.
“It’s really only a constructing block,” Brenner said. “I believe that’s what the Lowe’s people have been enthusiastic about as we leveled up their in-store innovation as a foundation to where now, we are able to construct on top of that with more automated technology, faster attribution.”
Addressing retail media network privacy standards
In the case of the audio ads Lowe’s has implemented, Vibenomics also works with Placer.ai, a knowledge company that measures location data, foot traffic and more. Placer.ai provides data insights to Vibenomics that help track store-by-store and hour-by-hour impressions.
Vibenomics doesn’t gather demographic information, even with its visual display ads. And Placer.ai doesn’t use device identification to trace location or foot traffic. It uses machine learning and imagery to find out how many individuals enter retail stores and for a way long. Brenner said the businesses follow standards that the Web Promoting Bureau has set.
The IAB is making those standards available for public comment until Nov. 1. Moreover, it said, it created the standards “to handle the rapidly expanding in-store Retail Media opportunities and offer unified definitions, measurement standards, and guidelines for ad formats and store zones.”
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