News Briefs

Seattle-based AdsPostX has launched OmniSDK, a solution enabling retailers to monetize behavioral and intent signals across a shopper’s journey, according to a media release. The solution factors in the most opportune moments to serve applicable ads and offers across the path to purchase and beyond.

AdsPostX is a post-transaction ad platform that delivers personalized offers through proprietary targeting technology Nexos. Its OmniSDK technology collects sophisticated signals with rich insights for more relevant actions and campaign optimization, per the release. As a result, the upper-funnel technology aims to deliver incremental growth from the virtual front door to post-transaction.

The smart serving signals can indicate relevancy for product pairings to cross-promote based on items being browsed. While grocers and CPG brands have successfully cross-merchandised items for years in brick-and-mortar stores, OmniSDK helps retailers do the same thing but with more personalization online in real time, per the release.

“There are many signals across the shopper journey that can be collected to determine and deliver relevant offers and ads at key moments,” Roj Niyogi, chief product officer at AdsPostX, said in the release. “This moves beyond basic keyword and cart history data, leveraging site location and dwell time on product pages and many other advanced signals based on shopper behavior to offer up smart media placements. Our drop-in, small-footprint OmniSDK provides the ability to easily unlock relevancy factors that will mature retail media into a new era and provide true incremental growth opportunities for brands and retailers alike.”

The OmniSDK is open to retailers looking to extract learnings that occur within online shopping moments across the path to purchase, such as pre-checkout, browsing patterns, reviews and returns.

Earlier this year, CitrusAd and AdsPostX partnered to enable retailers to provide relevant ads throughout a customer’s complete shopping experience, including the confirmation page after they checkout.

British-based cosmetics and skincare brand Revolution Beauty and joined forces with Epic Games to bring to market a "Fortnite" beauty collaboration inspired by the sandbox game. The limited-edition “Revolution Beauty x Fortnite” collection launched exclusively on May 27 at Walmart stores and online via the retailer’s website and RevoltuionBeauty.com.

Fortnite’s first foray in the health and beauty space, the Revolution Beauty x Fortnite collection spans 27 products, including skincare, cosmetics and product applicators such as beauty blenders and brushes. The collection was inspired by the game and its popular characters (e.g., Peely, Supply Llama and Cuddle Team Leader) and appeals to both the players behind the game's 500 million-plus registered accounts worldwide and Revolution Beauty's customer base, according to a media release.

"Pairing Revolution Beauty's competitively priced and high-quality products with this globally recognized game for their first-ever beauty collaboration, we are appreciative of the opportunity to engage with this incredible gaming community that also values creative freedom and color play,” Sara Staniford, president of Revolution Beauty USA, said in the release.

The collection’s “key SKUs” include the Peely banana mousse mask, the Supply Llama 9 pan shadow palette and the Cuddle Team Leader nail polish, according to the release. Each product in the collection is priced at $12 and under and is cruelty free.

Wakefern Food Corp., the supermarket co-op and parent company of ShopRite, Price Chopper and The Fresh Grocer, is expanding usage of Freeosk’s interactive sampling kiosks to increase its multisensory retail media activations in stores.

Following a successful pilot, Wakefern is placing Freeosk display units in 95 ShopRite and The Fresh Grocer stores, according to a media release. The kiosks serve as in-store “discovery destinations” for new products and categories. They offer digital media space via large touchscreens as well as provide secondary merchandising space for product and dispense free samples.

According to the company’s release, Freeosk campaigns generate an average sales lift of about 50%, with 70% of buyers being new to the brand and 20% of the converted shoppers repeating purchases post-campaign. 

“Trial lowers barriers to entry for products and expands the shopper base for brands by attracting incremental users to the category while in-store,” Natalie Menza-Crowe, director of marketing and wellness strategy for Wakefern, said in the release. “By capturing the shopper activity, brands are provided transparent measurement and retail media opportunities to engage with emerging and renewed brand users.”  

According to Merkel’s 2022 Retail Media Research Report, just 9% of U.S. retail media networks offer in-store digital media for brand campaigns. However, that number is poised to grow as the connected store experience trends upward and more retailers and brands look to offer a more comprehensive approach to retail media offerings, including with multisensory in-store activations.

Publicis Groupe’s CitrusAd has introduced keyword bidding to help brands and advertising agencies enhance their campaigns and retail media strategies.

With the new bid-by-keyword capability, which is expected to go live in June, marketers will be able to include multiple bid strategies on each keyword within a single campaign, according to a media release.

Keyword bidding, also known as a pay-per-click (PPC) bid, represents the amount of money you are willing to spend for a single click on a given keyword or group of keywords to help secure top ad placements of search results.

CitrusAd offers a unified, self-serve platform that delivers shopper-relevant advertising experiences on commerce websites and across the open web.

The CitrusAd platform, powered by Epsilon, already suggests appropriate keywords and allows the advertiser to choose all keywords, while also showing the performance of each keyword within campaigns, with visibility into share of voice and percentage of impressions won. Now, brands and agencies can run campaigns on CitrusAd and optimize based on the performance of selected keywords. 

This new functionality is the first in a series of platform enhancements that CitrusAd is rolling out to help brands and advertisers easily create and manage campaigns.

“While a campaign may have had a [cost-per-click] bid across the board initially, it was incredibly clear on our platform that some keywords are more valuable to marketers than others,” Adam Skinner, managing director, retail media networks, CitrusAd, said in the release. “The new bid-by-keyword capability, allows marketers to weigh their campaigns by the most effective keywords for profitable results.”

On “National Orange Juice Day” on May 4, Dole Packaged Foods launched a petition to establish Aug. 17, 2023, as “National Pineapple Juice Day.”

Dole is putting its weight behind a cause it cares about, and time will tell if the American public cares too. The canned beverage manufacturer believes that pineapple juice is “naturally superior” to other juices due to its unique taste and vitamin C source, but that it doesn't get the recognition it deserves, according to a media release. And, after 90 years of producing canned pineapple juice, Dole thinks the juice deserves its own nationally recognized micro-holiday.

Dole is calling on all pineapple juice lovers (or at least 5,000 of them) to sign a change.org petition in favor of creating the designated holiday on Aug. 17. If and when enough virtual signatures are collected, Dole will take the charge to make National Pineapple Juice Day official. To sweeten the deal, from now until May 31, Dole will make a donation for each signature to Feeding America (up to $5,000) to support programs to end hunger as part of the Dole Promise. (As of the time of publication, the petition had received 33 signatures.)

"As the leader in pineapple juice, we strongly believe this tropical beverage deserves its own day to be celebrated," Orzse Hodi, senior vice president and managing director, Americas, Dole Packaged Foods, said in the release. "We ask pineapple juice drinkers to join us and help make Pineapple Juice Day real."

Omnichannel marketing platform Skai has expanded its partnership and integration with Snap Inc., creator of social media platform Snapchat, to make it easier for Skai clients to manage their Snapchat campaigns alongside all other publishers.

This expanded partnership elevates Snapchat to be an essential advertising publisher for Skai clients, as it garners more than 750 million monthly active users and reaches more than 75% of 13- to 34-year-olds in more than 20 countries, according to a media release from Skai, which calls it the “social platform of choice” for Gen Z and Millennials.

Skai says the move will give advertisers more ways to connect their full-funnel Snapchat campaigns with lower-funnel sales on retail media networks. Within Snapchat, the partnership aims to improve analysis and amplify programs with essential editing capabilities that help assess, automate and activate campaigns in alignment with all other performance media, per the release.

"Snapchat brings a unique consumer experience and audience,” Paul Vallez, executive vice president of business development at Skai, said in the release. “We've seen tremendous demand from clients who are looking to manage Snapchat alongside all of their advertising channels on our platform. Skai's extended support enables marketers to measure the impact Snapchat has on the customer decision journey so they can align marketing budgets with business impact."

Skai says it will help marketers enhance their Snapchat campaigns by:

• Using Skai features such as dimensions, categories and tagging for organization; dashboards for visibility; Automated Actions for optimization; and cross-channel reporting.
• Automating formerly manual processes using features like Skai's BuildURL, which allows for tracking and attribution across social publishers and helps identify which channel is working best.
• Analyzing and optimizing creative using Skai's forthcoming Creative Center, which gives marketers AI-derived insights into creative performance across publishers and placements in one central location.
• Helping marketers decide where to allocate budgets to reach the right audience with the right messages using upcoming capabilities like Skai's omnichannel Executive HQ, Creative Center and Instant Reports. 

“With this partnership, we will enable advertisers to leverage Skai's expertise in campaign performance insights, ultimately helping our partners achieve greater success with their campaigns and driving growth and innovation in the industry,” said Ali Rana, global head of product & revenue partnerships at Snap.