Lowe’s Tests Google’s Offsite Retail Media Solution

As retail media continues to grow rapidly and brands are increasingly interested in using retailer data to power advertising campaigns, and particularly as third-party cookies phase out, Google has launched a closed-beta solution for offsite retail media campaigns. Home improvement retailer Lowe's is one of the beta partners testing the solution.

The solution is part of Search Ads 360 (SA360), Google’s enterprise search engine campaign management tool. It combines unique retailer audiences with Google AI to help advertisers scale across channels, according to a Google Marketing Platform blog post. 

“In SA360, we’ve created a privacy-centric way for participating retailers to enable brands to use their first-party data to fuel AI-powered Performance Max campaigns,” the blog post read. 

Lowe’s One Roof Media Network is launching its first offsite retail media offering on Google Search and Google Shopping inventory. Google says Lowe’s One Roof will use a managed service model today and partner with SA360 on the journey toward self-service options for their brand partners in the future.

In addition, in the coming months, Google says it will expand the beta to more retailers globally and test more features that allow for self-service campaign management for brands.

“With this style of campaign management in SA360, retailers in the future will enable brands and their agencies to manage campaigns themselves,” per the blog post.

Google says this self-service model also allows retailers to selectively share first-party audiences with their brand partners, without exposing user-level data. This allows brands to serve relevant ads that direct to the product detail page of a retailer website.

In addition, retailers will be able to share only the parts of their product inventory feeds that are relevant to a brand partner, so one brand never sees inventory details such as stock levels or pricing for other brands, per the blog. This also makes it so consumers only see ads for in-stock products, which one recent study determined is consumers’ top problems when shopping.

As more retailers come on board, Google says agency partners will also be able to manage retail media campaigns for many brands from one centralized location and leverage SA360’s enterprise productivity tools.