Digital retail media can bring many benefits to brands willing to take the opportunity on. So, let’s explore what these are! First of all, digital retail media can dramatically increase a brand’s reach.

It’s pretty much agreed upon now that traditional mass marketing channels like TV, radio and print have drastically declined in popularity and effectiveness, and today’s audiences are resistant to messaging that explicitly attempts to sell them something. Instead, they prefer to consume content on their terms, when they want, and it’s generally only content that engages them and provides value - otherwise, they’ll just switch off, and they may even be a little bit annoyed.

However, when it comes to digital retail media, this isn't such a problem. After all, if a consumer is visiting a retailer’s site, or at least if they’ve done so in the past, then they’re probably relatively interested in buying something, and they’ll be more open and willing to be convinced by what you have to offer!

What’s more is that many retail sites can expose your brand and products to huge audiences. Walmart, for example, offers advertisers the ability to communicate with over 150 million shoppers a week!

Along with opening up your brand to wider audiences, digital retail media also radically improves the visibility of your brand in front of these audiences.

Digital retailers often sell and display a large volume and variety of products, and it’s not uncommon for the number of individual products listed on eCommerce sites to sit comfortably in the thousands - and for Amazon, we’re talking millions. But, online shoppers will only see a tiny fraction of these on their screen at any single moment, depending on the site and device they’re shopping on! So essentially, there’s a lot of competition for the shopper’s attention, and advertising with digital retail media can help brands get themselves noticed.

This is important because many shoppers use eCommerce sites for inspiration and product discovery, and they’re very rarely visiting a site with an exact product in mind. In fact, 9 out of 10 online shoppers say that they haven’t made their mind up about a brand before starting a product search. And this point still stands when considering shoppers visiting physical stores too.

Many shoppers - especially those shopping in the Pet, Personal Care and Baby categories - like to research online and buy offline, looking to confirm product quality before going in-store and making a purchase. It’s been found that almost half of brick-and-mortar store sales start with the consumer reading an online review, and Walmart claims that 58% of its in-store shoppers often visit after they’ve first had a look around on Walmart.com.

Digital retail media isn’t just useful for on-site research either. Off-site retail media on the open web can really turn the tide in your brand’s favour when people search online for instructions, inspiration or advice.

Imagine, for example, that you’ve visited a web page that displays a recipe you want to follow. Now imagine some well-executed digital retail media appearing on the same page, advertising one of the key ingredients required to make that recipe a reality. This type of digital retail media is a fairly persuasive way to win consumers over, creating immediate awareness as soon as they discover the need for the product, and providing them with a quick and simple route to adding it to their online basket!

And ultimately, that last point - shoppers adding your products to their basket and making a purchase - is what digital retail media is all about. Sure, creating brand and product awareness is great, but that awareness is only really beneficial to your business if it goes somewhere. Awareness needs to lead to conversion, and the best place to try and convince consumers to buy your products is right at the moment when they need to make a decision - the point of purchase.

So, using digital retail media to remind consumers of your products and ensuring that your products are as visible and appealing as possible at this stage is ideal for generating sales.

Benefits