Commerce Media Balancing Act: Smarter Strategies for Buyers and Retailers
In today's dynamic retail media landscape, both retailers and buyers are navigating a host of challenges that demand innovative and strategic thinking.
For retailers, the journey begins with safeguarding high-quality customer data and preserving brand integrity. That could involve setting strict guidelines on where a logo appears or managing how inventory is curated for off-site placements.
At the same time, buyers grapple with the nuanced art of balancing channel mix, optimizing from delayed transactional data and ensuring that each ad placement, whether on a trusted site or the vast open web, drives toward measurable outcomes.
Let's explore both perspectives to uncover the essential strategies that drive sales, boost brand awareness and enhance consumer perception, ultimately paving the way for incremental revenue growth.
For Retailers: Protect Your Brand While Scaling Off-site
For retailers, off-site programmatic media buying is undeniably challenging. The allure of offering your partners lower-priced media and expanded reach with endless supply often masks the fundamental risks of relinquishing control over where and how your retailer brand is represented. Holding off-site strategies to the same standards as on-site initiatives can protect your data, safeguard your brand reputation, and deliver consistent, quality experiences to your partners and shoppers.
1. Choose Trusted Tech Partners
How do you decide which supply and demand partners to work with? It's essential to choose ones that not only secure your customer data but also adhere to strict quality controls over the inventory they manage and the sellers they invite into their marketplace.
2. Set Brand and Audience Guidelines
What are your rules for brand participation? Retailers need clear guidelines on which brands are approved and what audience creation types are allowed, all while ensuring that these practices don't clash with in-store or on-site competitor separation or your merchandising standards.
3. Curate Inventory for Quality Exposure
Do you consider only offering a private marketplace (PMP) deal to limit where ads can show up? Carefully curating the inventory, making sure only trusted sites and apps display your ads, helps ensure your brand's standards and marketing values shine through on only approved inventory that can be routinely maintained and updated at a second's notice.
4. Define Data-Use Requirements for Brands
Proactively set clear rules for data access, including decisions on co-branding and a defensive strategy against brand safety risks, to safeguard your reputation and control how your retailer's logo appears, even when buyers dictate ad placements.
5. Protect Data and Managing Insights
Have you locked down policies with SSPs or DSPs to prevent improper data use? It's important to ensure your data can't be extracted inadvertently through retargeted tactics. Take into consideration the kinds of additional audience insights (such as demographics and household income) that third-party reporting might reveal. Also, determine how opt-outs are processed to maintain consumer trust and protection.
Buyers: Master the Complex Off-Site Landscape
When buying on-site, every ad placement is part of a closed and controlled ecosystem offered by the retailer. As a buyer, you're attuned to the idea that not every slot on a search result or product description page is created equal. This competitive environment forces you to bid aggressively for positions that guarantee maximum product visibility and influence.
In contrast, off-site programmatic media buying is far less predictable. Sites and apps outside your immediate control lack the structured templates or funnels found in e-commerce domains. Without these guarantees, increasing brand awareness and maintaining high-impact engagements becomes an uphill battle. Not every placement on the open web carries the same transactional value as a crafted on-site ad experience. Brands must be deliberate in ensuring they appear in front of the right future shoppers.
1. Optimize With Delayed Data
When sales measurement data lags behind your campaign's daily reach, it can hinder your agility in a fast-moving programmatic space. Buyers are challenged to make early optimization decisions without access to real-time insights, often relying on the platform's guidance in channel selection, targeting, and pricing to steer initial strategy before significant spending begins.
2. Manage High Minimums and Spending Consistency
Securing a seat on a DSP platform often requires meeting high monthly minimums along with a consistent level of commitment. For strategic promotions or campaigns with variable budgets, this can feel like balancing an always-on programmatic buy with the challenges of a flexible spending plan. In such cases, consider managed services or partnering with a reseller that offers self-serve access to many RMNs without strict commitment requirements for each retailer.
3. Tackle the Top-of-Funnel Engagement Challenge
Starting at the top of the funnel off-site and guiding users back to your site or store for a purchase is a significant challenge that often requires time to influence. Buyers need to think outside the box — leveraging high-impact audio or streaming TV for initial awareness, then seamlessly following up with precise, reminder-based display ads — to craft a compelling storytelling sequence that effectively drives conversions.
4. Bridge the Skill Gap
Many digital teams are siloed. Search experts don't often have programmatic know-how, and programmatic pros aren't typically versed in search. This disconnect means that if your team lacks programmatic experience, you might face a steep learning curve when venturing into off-site commerce opportunities. Finding the right full-service partners or investing in cross-training becomes essential if you want a seamless channel integration.
5. Prioritize Inventory Quality With an Inclusion List
It all begins with a solid foundation, a curated inclusion list or a platform that takes inventory quality seriously. When you lean on a system or supplier that vets its inventory, you're not only protecting your brand suitability but also ensuring that every impression matters. It's all about setting high standards from the start rather than playing catch-up later with quality issues.
6. Tackle Brand Safety and Fraud Proactively
You can't rely solely on a vendor's "set and forget" solution to guard against brand safety pitfalls and fraudsters. A proactive approach means integrating your own checks and balances. It's about understanding the risks, setting internal benchmarks, and continuously evaluating your ad placements to ensure that your brand does not inadvertently appear next to harmful content and supports journalistic news.
7. Find the Right Channel Mix for ROAS Goals
How can you ensure your budget is being deployed effectively? Achieving your desired ROAS is like refining a recipe. It demands deep insights, ongoing testing, and nimble adjustments. You must continuously fine-tune your approach, recalibrate bid strategies, and acknowledge that not every channel is designed to drive bottom-of-the-funnel sales. Instead, focus on orchestrating a seamless cross-device strategy that leverages multiple touchpoints — from podcast ads and live sports streaming to timely reminders on weather apps — so that every impression works in harmony to drive revenue.
8. Balance Online Sales versus Offline Foot Traffic
Your strategy for driving online sales can't be a one-size-fits-all solution, especially when offline foot traffic and in-store purchases come into play. Are you setting your sights on building a digital funnel that drives purchases, or are you primarily aiming to boost in-store visits? Deciding this upfront will shape your tactics and which retailers can deliver measurable outcomes against your investment.
9. Create a Unified Media and Measurement Strategy
Navigating today's fragmented space demands dynamic bidding tactics and an integrated measurement approach. Whether you're invested in affiliate marketing, search tactics, content creators, digital-out-of-home placements, on-site, in-store, or off-site tactics, connected TV streaming, or traditional channels, it's essential to calibrate bids and budget allocation in a way that secures competitive engagement while managing costs in a constantly shifting space. Equally important is adopting a holistic reporting structure that consolidates real-time performance and reach data across all channels, enabling you to see how each touchpoint, from a digital billboard to a display banner, contributes to a unified, effective cross-media strategy.
10. Unleash Your Creative Potential
Make a lasting impression by leveraging the limitless possibilities at your disposal for brand awareness. Even if some retailers set guidelines, there's more room than ever for dynamic brand expression. Integrate eye-catching promotions and interactive elements to turn every channel into a shoppable experience through remote control activations, QR codes, and beyond. Repurpose influencer partnerships to weave in authentic user-generated content for added appeal.
The Balancing Act
Ultimately, success in retail media hinges on a deep partnership between data protection and dynamic advertising strategy. Both retailers and buyers must be proactive — leveraging quality inventory controls, clear measurement frameworks and smart bidding tactics — to secure their brand's reputation and achieve their desired ROAS. Understanding these interwoven challenges and implementing thoughtful, well-rounded strategies, stakeholders can navigate and turn these obstacles into opportunities for growth and innovation in an ever-evolving commerce marketplace.
About the Author
Joe Frick is vice president of business strategy and development at Goodway Group. He helps clients exceed customer acquisition and retention goals through the smart, creative and ethical use of marketing data. An active industry speaker, mentor and advisor, Joe is known for his high-energy approach and continual pursuit of knowledge, shown in his recent completion of an EMBA from NYC Stern. His expertise spans strategic planning, data analysis and innovative marketing solutions.
Laura Taylor is retail investment lead at Goodway Group, where she helps shape the future of retail media by bridging publisher-side roots with more than a decade of buy-side experience. With 14 years in programmatic and a career built on both innovation and precision, Laura brings a sharp eye for platform capabilities, a deep understanding of the biddable ecosystem and a hands-on approach to navigating industry shifts. She's known for her curiosity, strategic mindset and a genuine enthusiasm for solving complex ad tech challenges.
