Digital Ad Education Resources Archive

Track Digital Advertising Impact on Offline Conversions

ANNIE WISSNER — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 09:54:48 +0000

How do marketers know if their digital campaigns are creating conversions and if customers are going offline when making purchases? This has long been the situation that caused sales teams and marketers to silo their efforts and track hard conversions and soft conversions separately, despite working towards the same goal.

Depending on your business’s goals, conversion points can look very different for consumers, but that doesn’t mean digital campaigns don’t affect offline conversions. If we know a customer interacted with the campaign online, we can start to determine how that influenced their next steps with offline attribution.

Marketers need to have proof that advertising campaigns result in sales. For e-commerce advertisers, attribution is a more straightforward process. Tracking pixels monitor consumer behavior on websites and can tell which customers saw your ads before purchasing. For advertisers in verticals where purchases predominantly occur offline, online to offline attribution is more complicated.

What is Paid Search Advertising?

While there are other search engines, Google dominates the marketing world with Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords). And it makes sense since most users go to Google to, you know, Google something.

Paid search advertising (also known as sponsored ads, search marketing, search engine marketing, pay-per-click marketing, and cost-per-click marketing) is a technique that displays ads in search engine results pages (SERPs) whenever someone searches for relevant keywords. This way, the audience that sees your ad is perfectly matched for each result. Since paid search ads are based on the explicit needs of the users rather than on implicit information and behaviors, search ads target lower funnel audiences and can increase click and conversion rates.

Search ads are one of the most common forms of PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. While most search ads are only text, there’s a wide variety of sponsored search ads within maps, product listings, and featured snippets. All of these ad formats appear either at the top or on the side of your search results and are usually placed based on the ads’ keywords and how relevant they are to the results of a specific search query, the quality of ads, and the advertiser’s Ad Rank. Search ads can be very competitive, and the cost of these ads will vary depending on your competition. In many industries, you can expect to spend anywhere from 70 cents to five dollars per click (up to $90 for the most expensive keywords).

What is Offline Attribution?

At its core, offline attribution links online marketing activities—such as display ads, social media, and search campaigns—to offline actions, like in-store purchases, phone calls, or appointments. Marketers can get a comprehensive view of how their online campaigns drive real-world results by leveraging data from various sources, such as mobile location data, CRM systems, and point-of-sale (POS) systems.

Offline Attribution Defined:

The analytical practice of determining which digital marketing tactics, such as channels, campaigns, or creative, precede and contribute to offline business sales or conversions.

In this downloadable guide, you’ll learn the benefits of offline attribution, including bridging the gap between digital and physical, measuring in real-time with the highest-quality data, and stretching your investment.

Download Now

Why Does Offline Attribution Matter?

As a marketer, how do you know which of your efforts really convinced the customer to buy? In digital marketing, it’s easy to track online actions like clicks and form submissions, but many businesses still rely on offline conversions, like purchases made in a physical store.

Not all leads eventually purchase, and even for the ones that do, there could be several months between the time the lead is captured and when they actually decide to buy. With an offline attribution model, marketing and sales teams look at the same picture of the customer, from new website visitors to known leads to paying customers. Offline attribution allows marketers to view a customer’s journey at every touchpoint from start to finish.

Here’s why offline attribution is critical:

Holistic Customer Journey: Offline attribution provides a complete view of the customer journey, from digital touchpoints to in-store purchases. A McKinsey report underscores how modern marketing analytics must now integrate online and offline data to truly optimize for sales performance.
Optimized Marketing Spend: By identifying which campaigns are driving offline actions, marketers can better allocate budgets. According to Marketing Week, understanding offline attribution helps avoid short-termism and under-investment, allowing for more effective, long-term marketing strategies.
Better Decision-Making: Offline attribution provides valuable data for making informed decisions on where to invest in marketing. As noted by Ruler Analytics, aligning your digital marketing efforts with offline revenue outcomes allows for optimized campaign performance.

How Does Offline Attribution Work?

Offline attribution connects digital and traditional marketing efforts to offline outcomes. By breaking down the silos and viewing every step of the customer journey, marketers can start to quantify an ROI for marketing campaigns beyond the highly trackable online world.

Offline attribution models require the ability to compile and connect massive amounts of data from several different sources. By leveraging many pieces of technology, offline attribution platforms tie together complex online attribution models with trackable offline events. These platforms can achieve high levels of visibility by uniting offline data sets – like CRMs or IP addresses – to apply the same identifiers used to track online conversions to the eventual offline purchases that occur. This marriage of data is key to determining which of your online conversions eventually led to revenue for the business.

Offline attribution is a metric that aims to measure the effect of data-driven marketing campaigns across any channel (digital-online, mobile, DOOH, connected TV) in driving foot traffic to offline brick-and-mortar locations.

Offline attribution works by capturing and integrating data from multiple sources. Here’s a breakdown of how it operates:

Tracking Digital Activity: Campaign data from platforms like Google Ads or social media is collected, tracking user interactions such as impressions and clicks.
Capturing Offline Data: Data from POS systems or mobile location tracking is gathered, allowing you to see if a customer who viewed an ad eventually visited your store or completed a purchase.

Attribution: Advanced attribution models tie online interactions to offline actions, helping you understand which specific ads led to conversions. As mentioned by Invoca, tools like call tracking software can bridge the gap between online leads and offline sales by recording phone conversations and analyzing data for improved attribution.

Benefits of Offline Attribution

Understanding the Full Customer Journey: Offline attribution allows marketers to track customers from their first digital interaction to the final offline purchase, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the customer experience.
More Effective Budgeting: Knowing which campaigns drive real-world results allows for better budget allocation. A report by McKinsey highlights how companies using advanced attribution models have gained up to 21% in sales after reallocating marketing spend based on customer journey insights.
Increased ROI Measurement: With offline attribution, you can calculate the true ROI of your marketing campaigns by directly linking digital ad impressions to offline conversions rather than just relying on clicks or views.
Cross-Channel Synergy: Understanding how different channels, from CTV to display ads, work together to drive offline conversions helps create more cohesive and effective marketing strategies.

Real-World Applications

Industries such as automotive, retail, and healthcare increasingly turn to offline attribution to understand how digital ads affect in-person visits. For instance, an automotive dealership could use offline attribution to track how a digital campaign increased showroom visits, while a retail store might monitor how many customers visited after interacting with a social media ad.

The Bottom Line

Offline attribution is essential for connecting the dots between your online efforts and real-world outcomes. By utilizing data from multiple touchpoints and sources, marketers can finally see the bigger picture and optimize their campaigns for real-world success. Incorporating tools like call tracking, CRM integration, and mobile location data helps marketers get a more accurate measure of campaign performance and make better investment decisions.

The post Track Digital Advertising Impact on Offline Conversions appeared first on choozle.

Cross-Device Tracking & Targeting 101

ANNIE WISSNER — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 08:35:39 +0000

Cross-device tracking is one of the most valuable tactics available to marketers today—for good reason. With U.S. consumers using more connected devices than ever, marketers need to reach their audiences seamlessly across all these touchpoints.

The vast majority of Americans—97%—now own a cellphone of some kind, with nine in ten owning a smartphone, a significant increase from just 35% in the first survey of smartphone ownership conducted in 2011. According to Pew Research Center, 82% of Americans own a desktop or laptop computer, and 65% of households own a tablet. Hub Entertainment Research reports that 79% of U.S. homes now own a smart TV (such as Roku, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire), a sharp increase from 2020, when only 66% of households reported owning one.

For a primer on connected TV and how to get started, here’s a crash course on connected TV advertising.

What is Cross-Device Tracking & Targeting?

In uncomplicated terms, cross-device targeting is the practice of serving ads to the same consumer across multiple devices, including mobile phones, desktops, tablets, and connected TVs. Cross-device tracking enables this by identifying individual users across their different devices, while cross-device marketing refers to using this strategy in advertising campaigns.

Cross-device targeting allows you to reach consumers on their desktop, mobile, and tablet devices while ensuring you can track when a customer converts on a secondary device. It also enables you to identify your first- and third-party data audiences across their additional devices, expanding the available inventory for your digital advertising campaigns.

Marketers face the challenge of reaching their consumers in a unified way across all media and devices. Cross-device tracking and targeting allow you to do just that.

Why does it matter?

Recent data shows that U.S. internet households now own an average of 17 connected devices, reflecting the increased adoption of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, and other devices, according to Parks Associates.

This rise in connected device ownership highlights the growing need for marketers to adopt cross-device strategies to effectively reach consumers across their multiple screens and devices.

Cross-Device Targeting allows advertisers to:

Reach users on multiple devices: Whether a consumer is browsing on their phone, watching TV, or shopping on a desktop, you can reach them with a consistent message.
Track conversions across devices: With cross-device tracking, you can see if a user viewed an ad on their smartphone and then converted on their desktop.
Expand your targeting capabilities: Use first-party and third-party data with cross-device targeting to open up more inventory for your campaigns.
Tell a consistent brand story: Cross-device targeting opens up more advertising channels for marketers and allows advertisers to share their brand’s story consistently while reaching users across all of their devices.

How Does Cross-Device Tracking Work?

Contrary to cross-device targeting—the advertising tactic—cross-device tracking is more of an umbrella term that applies to the ways platforms or data companies identify like users across multiple devices. The goal is to know, with near certainty, that mobile device X belongs to the same person as laptop Y and Roku Z.

There are two main approaches:

Deterministic Matching: This method uses unique identifiers, such as login data, to identify users across devices. For example, when someone logs into their Facebook account on their mobile device and desktop, deterministic data matches these devices to one user. Deterministic data is typically more accurate but requires users to log in across devices.
Probabilistic Matching: This approach uses algorithms and statistical modeling to make educated guesses about which devices belong to the same user. By analyzing factors such as IP addresses, browsing patterns, and device types, probabilistic models create a likely connection between devices. While not as precise as deterministic matching, marketers can track users without needing login information.

Key Methods for Cross-Device Identity Resolution:

Marketers can use cross-device identity resolution platforms to match devices accurately and deliver privacy-compliant campaigns. Forrester estimates that cross-device identity resolution will become increasingly critical as privacy regulations evolve and cookies phase out. The types of cross-device identifiers include:

First-party registration data: This is your login registration data. When a user logs in to their Google account, for example, on their mobile device, laptop, and tablet, a consistent profile is created across all of those devices.
Third-party cookies: Cookies are small text files that log information when you visit a website. Your web or mobile browser picks up and stores this information, which historically has been the backbone of anonymously identifying users across the web.
Device IDs: Device IDs are identifiers associated with your device. With the rise of mobile devices, apps have dominated usage, which does not allow cookies to work.
OS-generated: Identifier made available by the operating system of that device
Android Device ID: Now, Google Advertising ID or IDFA (Apple).
Fingerprinting: A statistical ID made by device attributes received on an ad call and stored server-side. (i.e., device type, operating system, user-agent, IP address, timestamp, etc.). Examples of these types of IDs include companies such as TapAd, Adelphic, Drawbridge, and more.

Why Use Cross-Device Targeting?

Reaching users on multiple devices is convenient and highly effective. In fact, consumers are 30% more likely to convert when targeted across multiple devices.

Within Choozle, cross-device targeting is key to campaigns that involve first-party and third-party data, especially in verticals like eCommerce and CTV. Cross-device targeting lets you:

Expand your reach by identifying users across multiple devices, increasing your campaign’s impressions.
Apply frequency capping to control how often an individual sees an ad across devices, ensuring a cohesive brand experience without overwhelming the consumer.
Improve attribution by understanding the full journey a consumer takes, from seeing an ad on mobile to converting on desktop.

Curious about how Connected TV advertising fits into this strategy? Cross-device targeting ensures that you can retarget users on mobile after they’ve viewed your CTV ads.

Best Practices for Cross-Device Targeting

Holiday Campaigns: Cross-device targeting is essential during the holiday season when consumers are actively shopping across devices. Ensure your campaign reaches potential buyers when they’re browsing on mobile and completing purchases on desktop.
Pair Display Campaigns with Connected TV: A key strategy is to combine Connected TV advertising with display ads. Use cross-device targeting to follow up with viewers who saw your TV commercial and push them to convert on other devices like mobile or desktop.
Conversion-Based Campaigns: Apply cross-device targeting to track conversions across multiple touchpoints. Whether you’re running campaigns for hotel bookings or retail sales, ensure that consumers who view ads on one device can convert on another seamlessly.
Small Audience Campaigns: For campaigns with narrow audiences, cross-device targeting increases the available impressions, ensuring your message reaches more users without sacrificing precision.
Improve Customer Experience: Consumers use multiple devices to complete tasks. Ensure your ad campaigns create a smooth, consistent experience across devices to maximize engagement and conversions.

The Bottom Line

Cross-device targeting offers marketers an incredible opportunity to deliver consistent, effective messaging across the devices their consumers use daily. By leveraging the latest identity resolution techniques, you can build campaigns that engage consumers wherever they are—whether on a smartphone, desktop, or TV.

For more insights on building a cross-device strategy, check out our Cross-Device Overview Guide.

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Tips for a Successful Automotive Marketing Strategy

Choozle — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 10:07:25 +0000

Over the past few years, the car-buying cycle has significantly evolved with new trends and technologies, driving consumers to accelerate the shopping process from home. For many, the car-buying experience has shifted to an almost exclusively digital space. Now is the time for car manufacturers and dealerships to fully embrace this digital transformation, evolving online sales processes and advertising strategies to provide customers with a seamless, personalized digital journey.

Consumers are increasingly comfortable doing business online, with many relying on digital channels to research options and gather information before making a purchase. Thanks to online showrooms and car delivery services, some customers have even skipped the physical dealership altogether. To stay competitive, it’s crucial for automotive brands to leverage a data-driven digital strategy that aligns with modern buyer behaviors.

Learn how Choozle’s digital advertising tools can optimize your automotive campaigns.

How to Develop a Full-Funnel Automotive Digital Marketing Strategy

Shoppers are starting online: Research shows that the automotive customer journey lasts, on average, anywhere from five to twelve weeks, with online and offline touchpoints leading up to the final decision. Within the first week, 95% of shoppers turn to digital resources as their primary source of information. This is why investing in digital marketing strategies that target high-intent audiences is critical—building awareness early in the journey ensures your brand stays top-of-mind when purchase decisions are made.

Brand familiarity is key, as most buyers begin their journey without knowing which car they want. By deploying tactics like Connected TV (CTV), video, and audio advertising, you can reach broad yet targeted audiences on their most influential devices, driving meaningful engagement for the next stage of the buyer’s journey.

Pro Tip: Combining programmatic display ads and keyword targeting can help brands get in front of potential buyers early. Explore Choozle’s keyword-targeting features here.

Meeting Customers on All Devices: The Importance of Omnichannel

Cross-device targeting is a must. When customers are exposed to brand awareness messaging, they will continue to narrow down their shortlist, and serious buyers will dive deeper into researching your website, related sites, and competitors. During the consideration phase, automotive marketers can leverage third-party data segments and search retargeting to keep your brand visible on relevant websites.

Search retargeting is particularly powerful, allowing you to reach audiences based on their search activity, browsing behavior, and intent signals. By curating targetable audiences based on users’ online searches, you can reach potential customers exactly when they are researching and increase the likelihood of conversions. You can even optimize campaigns by targeting users at specific points in their journey—whether they are in the early stages or closer to making a purchase decision.

60% of all automotive searches now come from mobile devices. Optimizing your mobile presence with click-to-call ads and mobile-friendly landing pages ensures you capture potential buyers on the go.

Retargeting Tactics to Boost Car Dealership Sales

At this point in the journey, customers are close to making a decision and are ready to visit dealerships to test drive or finalize their purchase. To ensure you reach these bottom-of-funnel prospects, use retargeting ads to maintain engagement and push them toward a purchase.

Retargeting is often the final step of a digital campaign, reminding users who have already interacted with your brand—whether through display ads, inquiries, or test drive bookings—that they’re close to making a decision. These ads are crucial for recapturing interest and guiding potential buyers to your showroom.

Ready to elevate your retargeting strategy? See how Choozle’s platform can help.

Leveraging First-Party Data to Maximize Sales and Fixed Operations Revenue

One of the most valuable yet often underutilized resources in a dealership’s marketing toolkit is their CRM and first-party data. By tapping into this rich data source, dealerships can craft personalized marketing strategies that drive not only vehicle sales but also maximize revenue from fixed operations, particularly service and parts, which are often the most profitable revenue streams for dealerships.

Marketing to Past Lease Customers Using First-Party Data: A dealership’s CRM holds vital information about past lease customers who are nearing the end of their lease. By leveraging first-party data, you can create personalized campaigns that target these individuals with offers such as lease renewal incentives or new vehicle promotions. These highly targeted campaigns ensure you’re reaching customers who are already familiar with your brand, making it easier to build long-term relationships and boost repeat sales.
Excluding Recent Buyers with First-Party Data: On the flip side, using first-party data allows you to exclude customers who have recently made a purchase—specifically those who have bought within the last 3 to 6 months. These customers are less likely to be in the market for a new vehicle, and targeting them could result in wasted ad spend. By excluding these recent buyers, you can focus your budget on customers who are actively considering a purchase, improving campaign efficiency and maximizing return on investment (ROI).
Maximizing Fixed Operations Revenue with First-Party Data: In addition to driving sales, first-party data can be a game-changer for fixed operations marketing, which focuses on service and parts. Service and parts departments are key profit centers for dealerships, often generating higher margins than vehicle sales. With first-party data, you can reach your existing customer base with personalized offers and service reminders, driving them back to your dealership for post-sale services.

- Service Reminders: Use your CRM to send timely service reminders based on vehicle mileage or time since the last service. Targeted email or SMS campaigns can encourage customers to schedule maintenance or repairs.

- Seasonal Promotions: Leverage seasonal service promotions to offer incentives such as winter tire checks or summer AC tune-ups. These offers can be tailored to your customers’ specific vehicle needs based on your CRM data.

- Parts Promotions: Use first-party data to target customers needing specific parts based on their vehicle model or previous service history. Special discounts on parts or service bundles can increase conversions in this often-overlooked revenue area.

Pro Tip: By integrating your CRM with programmatic advertising platforms like Choozle, you can automate audience segmentation based on purchase and service history, ensuring you’re always targeting the right customers with relevant, data-driven offers—whether it’s for a new car or an oil change.

Track Offline Attribution for a Full-Funnel View

Don’t lose sight of the offline impact of your digital campaigns. Setting up offline attribution allows you to bridge the gap between online engagement and in-store purchases. By integrating geolocation data and analyzing the customer’s digital touchpoints, you gain a full view of how your campaign influenced a sale. This insight is invaluable for both sales and marketing teams as it highlights what worked and where adjustments can be made for even better performance.

Key Takeaways for a Winning Automotive Marketing Strategy

To remain competitive in today’s automotive market, your digital advertising strategies must align with modern buyer behaviors:

Embrace full-funnel marketing: From awareness to purchase, every step of the journey must be covered.
Use omnichannel and cross-device strategies to engage consumers across mobile, desktop, and other platforms.
Leverage search retargeting and third-party data to meet customers where they are in their journey.
Prioritize mobile-first strategies, as mobile searches dominate the automotive space.
Track offline attribution to measure the real impact of your digital efforts on dealership visits and sales.

Automotive marketing strategies are changing, but by keeping your digital advertising up to date, capturing and utilizing the most relevant data, and honing in on actionable leads, your marketing and sales teams can capitalize on the huge amount of car shoppers researching online right now.

Ready to boost your car dealership’s digital sales? Leverage advanced automotive digital marketing strategies with Choozle. Contact us today!

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Harnessing the Power of Retail Media in Digital Advertising

Choozle — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 06:25:42 +0000

Retail media is taking a strategic position in the digital advertising space, emerging as a powerful, future-proof channel to bring brands closer to their target audiences. According to a recent forecast by eMarketer, omnichannel retail media ad spend is set to hit $59.98 billion in 2024. With such substantial investment flowing into this channel and a growing demand for first-party data, it’s clear that many other businesses will seek to capitalize on the opportunities presented by retail media. In this blog, we’ll outline what retail media is and how you can capitalize on this advertising opportunity.

Leveraging Data for Precision Targeting

Successful retail brands are capitalizing on the rich reservoirs of data housed within major retailers’ ecosystems. By tapping into finely-tuned, purchase-based audiences, these brands achieve closed-loop measurement, accurately attributing online and in-store sales to their digital campaigns.

Retail media allows advertisers to target specific audiences based on their shopping behaviors, preferences, and demographics. This targeted approach enhances the effectiveness of advertising campaigns by reaching consumers who are more likely to be interested in the products or services being promoted.

Despite uncertainties surrounding cookie-based targeting and shifts towards opt-in advertising, retailers remain resilient, leveraging their vast repositories of first-party consumer data to drive personalized ad delivery and measured performance.

What is retail media?

In brief, retail media refers to advertising strategies where brands collaborate with retailers to reach their target audience. When you think of retail media, you probably think of more traditional examples, like branded in-store end caps or coupons and catalogs via direct mail, but modern retail media has evolved significantly with the digital transformation of the industry.

By becoming a more integral part of the digital marketing landscape, retail media has become a mechanism where brands can leverage the data and, in many cases, the on-site inventory of their retailers and their respective platforms to promote their own products or services. Today, retailers are rolling out their own advertising platforms (see: Walmart Connect, Amazon Ads, or Kroger Precision Marketing) or partnering up with industry-leading buy-side platforms to provide advertisers the ability to target against their first-party, purchase-based audiences and accurately measure the corresponding performance and impact of their marketing efforts. So which retailer is leading the charge?

Diversified Placement Opportunities

As retail and ad tech continue to merge, retailers are expanding their array of media placement options significantly. These encompass “on-site” advertising opportunities, which involve showcasing ads and videos directly on the retailer’s own websites or apps (for instance, Amazon Sponsored Product Ads). Meanwhile, there’s also what’s commonly known as “off-site advertising,” where retailers furnish advertisers with the necessary data to target their customers across third-party channels like Connected TV (CTV) streaming platforms, diverse web publishers, or social media platforms. Notably, all this is accomplished while leveraging the invaluable audience data inherent in their respective retail platforms.

4 Strategies for Retail Media Success

In the dynamic world of retail media, savvy brands are capitalizing on the wealth of data provided by retailers to execute highly effective omnichannel campaigns. These campaigns employ a diverse array of targeting strategies, each tailored to engage and resonate with specific audience segments, such as:

1. Competitive Conquesting: This tactic empowers advertisers to zero in on consumers who have previously or frequently purchased products from their competitors. Depending on the retailer’s capabilities, this approach can vary from broadly targeting frequent purchasers of products within your category to more precisely retargeting individuals who have recently bought specific items from your competitors.

2. Retargeting Past Purchasers: Particularly impactful for brands in industries like CPG, F&B, and apparel, retargeting past purchasers serves as a potent method to re-engage with an existing customer base. Whether the aim is to advertise a sale, introduce a new product, or maintain brand awareness, this tactic stands as a cornerstone within retail media, consistently delivering strong results across diverse campaign objectives.

3. Excluding Past Purchasers: Leveraging the same past purchaser data, many brands opt to exclude these individuals from their targeting efforts to ensure their ad impressions aren’t wasted on users who have already made a purchase and are no longer potential customers. This tactic is commonly employed by brands with a focus on one-time purchases, such as appliances or consumer electronics.

4. Targeting Lifestyle and Past & Predictive Category Buyers: Targeting Lifestyle and Past & Predictive Category Buyers: An essential aspect of retail media strategy involves leveraging retailer-syndicated lifestyle and purchase category segments to connect with the desired audience. Whether it’s a burgeoning healthy snack brand seeking out regular purchasers of organic or health-conscious products, or a pet food brand aiming to increase awareness among new or existing pet owners, this tactic serves as a fundamental upper-funnel approach for all retail media campaigns.

In summary, retail media is important due to its ability to target consumers effectively, provide valuable data insights, accurately measure results, and enhance the overall shopping experience. As the retail landscape evolves with technological advancements and changing consumer expectations, retail media is poised to become an even more crucial marketing strategy moving forward.

Ready to get started?

With Choozle, you gain access to a network of top-tier retailers and buy-side platforms, allowing you to execute strategic and high-performing media campaigns seamlessly. Whether your brand is featured on Amazon, Walmart, Target, Kroger, Albertsons, Walgreens, Meijer, Drizly, Fanatics, or any other major retailer, we’ve got you covered.

If your brand is already selling through these retail channels or simply interested in exploring the potential of retail media, our team is here to help. Reach out to us at sales@choozle.com, and let’s schedule a call to discuss how Choozle can tailor a solution to meet your specific marketing objectives. Let’s elevate your brand together.

Hunter Phillips

Hunter Phillips is the Director of Business Development and Learning at Choozle and is passionate about helping companies drive growth through marketing technologies. Throughout his seven-year tenure with Choozle he has worked in various roles across AdOps, Product, and Partnerships. Before Choozle, Hunter led marketing efforts for several early-stage technology companies. Outside of work, Hunter spends his time traversing Colorado outdoors with his rescue pup, Pepper, and exploring all the new restaurants and live music Denver offers.

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Five Tips for Your Holiday Advertising Campaigns

Choozle — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 09:54:31 +0000

Less than twenty-four hours after Thanksgiving, it’s Black Friday.

Forty-eight hours after Black Friday, it’s Cyber Monday.

And after Cyber Monday, it’s a countdown to the holidays.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Thanksgiving weekend accounts for the biggest eCommerce opportunity. Last year, brands pulled in a record $9.5 billion on Black Friday, an increase from the previous year.

Cyber Monday is again expected to be the biggest online shopping day in history. Black Friday, Thanksgiving, and ‘Cyber Tuesday’ should also continue to rank among the leading days for the season.

Given those unprecedented numbers, we can only expect that this year will be a big opportunity for holiday advertising campaigns.

To help you optimize your holiday advertising campaigns for Thanksgiving weekend, we put together five tips for your holiday campaigns,

1. Increase bids

The holiday season can be competitive. Every marketer is fighting for the chance to get in front of their potential customers. Even with the increase of traffic in Q4, especially in November and December, this competition means bids and other performance metrics will rise.

Think about planning ahead by increasing your base bid and max bids before Thanksgiving weekend to capitalize on increased demand.
Take a look at historical performance to find what days saw the highest amount of traffic (i.e., Black Friday or Cyber Monday) and raise your daily budget caps to ensure you are capturing all those potential customers.
Knowing that eCommerce doesn’t happen between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. like brick and mortar stores, try adjusting your scheduling and dayparting bid adjustments for the times of day that have produced the highest traffic.

Simply put: Plan ahead to capture increased holiday traffic by increasing bids and daily budgets.

2. Enable cross-device targeting

How are you reaching your potential customers across all their devices?

The stakes are high during the holiday season. Holiday shoppers are scrambling to finish their shopping lists, which can include browsing on their laptops, in-store visits, or holiday movie watching on Hulu.

With fierce competition, how do you ensure that you’re investing holiday marketing budgets in the most impactful and efficient way? How do you reach as many potential customers as possible? How can you make sure that your potential customer’s experience is positive and that you drive positive ROI, too?

Take advantage of rising conversion rates during the holiday peak season by enabling cross-device targeting across all your campaigns (especially on your retargeting or lower-funnel strategies).

Cross-device targeting can help you maximize your chances of finding and messaging your potential customers as they navigate across screens. If the average customer is using three to four devices to make their purchasing decision, and you’re only reaching them on their laptop, you’re missing out on ample opportunities to catch their attention on their phones, tablets, and other connected devices.

3. Pace ahead

Since the pandemic, retailers and marketers were quick to offer online promotions earlier in the year to capitalize on the holiday season. With retailers still emphasizing eCommerce, it’s likely we could see a similar holiday head start this year. An earlier start with holiday sales will also help avoid fulfillment issues later in the holiday season as well.

Take advantage of the early start this holiday season by adjusting your campaign budgets to pace ahead. Pacing ahead will enable you to capture impressions for all your potential customers.

Remember that pacing is more than looking at your daily spend. Rather than making sure that your digital advertising campaign is pacing evenly across the entire holiday season, ask yourself if you need to reserve budget to boost spend on specific days, such as promotions? Are there more important days, such as the last day for shipping?

Taking these questions into consideration, along with your goals for the holiday season, should ensure that you are hitting appropriate pacing levels even with the holiday season kicking off early

4. Activate mobile audiences

Thanksgiving weekend isn’t limited to eCommerce. Brick and mortar store visits are still on consumer checklists. As consumers are spreading out their holiday shopping across different destinations, in-store and online, you should look for ways to engage them where ever they are or where they have been. With geofencing, you could reach mobile devices to reach individuals while they are participating in the holiday shopping weekend. Or, you could leverage geoframing to target individuals on other devices after they have left their holiday shopping locations.

Our geofencing and geoframing partner has ready-to-use holiday shopping audiences that include over 475 place categories and over 270 branded chains.

Place	Behavioral
Cards & stationery	Holiday shoppers
Jewelry & watches	Big box shoppers
Shopping centers	Eco-friendly shoppers
Toys	Holiday deal seeker
	Electronics Shopper

Need a quick refresher on geofencing and geoframing and how you can enable these tactics in your holiday campaigns?

5. Leverage high buying signals

The buying process is quick during the holiday season. Your potential customer can move through awareness to consideration to purchase phases in a matter of a couple hours. With the increased competition, it’s vital to capture that potential customer when they are in the prime purchase mindset. Even with the consumers that do their holiday shopping earlier, there will still be a rush in November and December for consumers to finish their shopping.

So here’s how can you take advantage of the rush:

Think about using your CRM list of recent purchases to reach those customers most likely to buy additional products or services or for cross-selling opportunities. Marketing efforts that focus on increasing second orders can yield a higher purchase frequency to drive significant ROI.
Try targeting sites that have content related to gift guides or shopping lists for the holidays with contextual keyword targeting. Add keywords like a holiday gift guide, travel gifts, holiday gifts for tech, gift ideas, etc.
Retargeting (with recency): Recency is one of the most critical variables in retargeting, especially during the holiday season. You want to make bid adjustments so you are bidding higher for consumers soon after they’ve visited your site so you can stay top of mind.

Make your list and check it twice

As you prepare your advertising campaigns for the holiday season, don’t forget that we’re here to help. You can think of us as your elves in the digital advertising workshop.

The post Five Tips for Your Holiday Advertising Campaigns appeared first on choozle.

Holiday Marketing Strategies featuring Buddy the Elf

Choozle — Sun, 08 Sep 2024 08:00:39 +0000

“I planned out our whole day: First, we’ll make snow angels for two hours, and then we’ll go ice skating, and then we’ll eat a whole roll of Toll-House cookie dough as fast as we can, and then to finish, we’ll snuggle.” – Buddy, Master Tinker Apprentice

With the holiday season quickly approaching, your marketing plan is probably looking a lot like Buddy’s list of holiday must-dos–making creative, building audiences, trafficking cookies, and more. Just like any campaign to-do list, your holiday marketing strategy and execution need to be ready for prime time.

With a little thought and preparation, you can adapt your holiday marketing strategy and execution to make the most of our new holiday landscape. And we’re here to help. Inspired by some wise words from one of the best holiday movies, Elf, we’ve put together a list of the five tips for your holiday advertising campaigns.

Tip #1: “Santa’s Coming!” Start now

This tip might be an obvious one, but it shouldn’t be overlooked, especially this year. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), “40 percent of consumers begin their holiday season shopping before Halloween.”

Beginning your digital advertising strategy at least two to three months in advance of the prime holiday shopping season is ideal. For most consumers, the buying process will start much earlier than when the purchase is made. It would be best to spend time and budgets showing your potential customers why they should buy with you well before they are ready to buy and nurture them through the sales process.

You are allowing an ample amount of time for the consumer to become aware of your brand. This will enable you to ensure you are serving to an audience that is most likely to buy, rather than initiating customer discovery at a time when sales are so critical.

If we can learn anything from Buddy, it’s that the best elves and marketers plan well in advance.

Tip #2: “The best way to spread Christmas cheer” is engaging creative

The holiday season is a time to stand out with your creative message. This is why it is our #2 tip. Creating eye-catching creative assets is one of the best ways to reach your desired audience. Your creative assets for your holiday campaign can be festive, emotional, or humorous, but it should be bold and fit with the overall theme or focus of this year’s efforts.

You should continue to think about how you can evolve your creatives and messaging to reflect your target audience’s current situation and context.

Another way to engage your target consumer is to include any special offers or deals on the creative, especially for returning shoppers. These can be displayed as the main headline, “Save with us this holiday season,” or the call-to-action “Save 15% Today”. Most importantly, ensure you create unique touchpoints with shoppers who visited you over the past few months by serving up relevant offers appropriate for the holiday season. This way, you are reaching an audience that is already aware of your brand.

Tip #3: “Ow! Son of a nutcracker,” that didn’t work

Many consumers and retailers are looking forward to the holiday season, but they know that many traditional activities like Black Friday shopping aren’t a reality. More brands and stores are focusing on ecommerce sales, which is expected to increase competition even more. Around 61 percent of retailers expect more activity through digital advertising channels, and businesses are ramping up their holiday marketing plans. As we approach the holiday season, it is essential to note that many unknowns and strategies won’t always work.

But don’t fret, there are adjustments you can make to be successful.

Whether you’re reaching for CTR, CPA, CPC, or reach, we recommend waiting about a week before making adjustments to your ad groups. This also applies to the types of targeting strategies you are using. With this amount of time under your belt, you’ll be able to see more accurate data on your results and decide where to make changes.

Tip #4: “You did it!” but don’t stop

As you start to make changes CPMs, keep in mind the bigger picture. If we look at the CPM trends of previous years, CPMs gradually increase with the last week in November, standing out as the tipping point on a slight upslope trajectory.

As the week’s progress in Q4, it is essential to keep a close eye on win rate and pacing metrics as they will indicate if your CPMs are competitive enough to win the available inventory. Think about planning by increasing your base bid and max bids before well Thanksgiving weekend to capitalize on increased demand.

Tip #5: “You want me to help?” we’re here for you

Consumer behaviors will take center stage this holiday season as they could shift and change quickly. Like every year, the holiday season may bring some surprises that will require marketers and brands to adjust their strategies. Looking at trends from previous years and how the pandemic has shifted preferences and habits, brands should prepare for that as they plan their digital strategies this holiday season.

These alternative delivery options are one example of how consumers are shifting their behaviors this holiday season. This year, it will be even more vital for you and your business to stay on top of your digital advertising efforts, their results, and how the marketplace is shifting to ensure you are making the most of the holiday season.

This year, many businesses and marketers are looking forward to the holiday season more than ever. You aren’t alone in hoping that the holiday season could help to make up for lost revenue during the beginning of the year and start the New Year with a positive note.

So, we’re here for you. Reach out to our team of experts, and we’ll help sprinkle your advertising campaign with some holiday cheer.

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Optimizing Holiday Marketing Campaigns with Connected TV

Choozle — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 11:15:28 +0000

The holiday shopping season is here, and and retailers across the board have adapted their marketing strategies to accommodate shoppers’ new priorities throughout the season. With competition higher than ever before, marketers need to leverage every opportunity to reach consumers and build meaningful relationships during the holiday season. Connected TV (CTV) is the perfect channel for your media mix if you want to launch eye-catching and meaningful creatives on the biggest screen in the house while utilizing trackable data to optimize marketing efforts later down the marketing funnel.

Jump to:

Connected TV advertising’s landscape

Measuring and optimizing Connected TV

Optimizing your holiday strategy with CTV

Connected TV advertising’s landscape

Streaming TV content continues to be the zeitgeist for most people with more options than ever before. Connected TV video streaming time has almost doubled since last year. And with 88% of US households owning CTV devices, it’s become more evident than ever that you need to integrate CTV ads into your marketing strategy to reach highly engaged audiences on the big screen in the household.

CTV advertising is purchased through the private marketplace (PMP) deals. The private marketplace inventory is one auction level above the open exchange allowing marketers the chance to access specific placements in an auction with fewer bidders, making win rates higher.

The private marketplace deals give you access to a collection of high-caliber and trustworthy publishers you’ll want to work with. It also allows you to bid on inventory within specific site sections, sub-sections, or creative formats that may not be available to target in the open auction environment.

Connected TV offers the same benefits as traditional TV advertising when creating an awareness-based campaign, but with the ability to reach highly engaged and targeted audiences. Connected TV enables enhanced targeting options and inventory selections to create an efficient channel for reaching your target market. With Choozle, you can search the connected TV deals to find inventory that will reach your desired audience.

CTV advertising can be a cornerstone of your media strategy during the holidays. It provides immediate value towards building brand recognition while providing valuable optimization opportunities with highly targeted audience segments, options for cross-device tracking, and retargeting capabilities you can leverage with other marketing tactics.

Measuring and optimizing Connected TV

Measurement has been a long-standing barrier for traditional TV ad buys, but with greater adoption of CTV, measurement and tracking options have become available with depth that was not possible with linear TV advertising.

Connected TV and linear TV ads are nearly identical in how they look: they are non-skippable ads on a big screen alongside broadcast-quality content. But how the viewer engages with the content is very different. Marketers can see how many connected TV impressions were delivered to their target audience, how often an ad was delivered, and view video completion rates for individual assets, which is not possible on linear TV.

Optimizing your holiday strategy with CTV

Understand the role CTV ads play in your marketing mix and maximize the value they provide by monitoring lift for both in-store visits and online conversions (including website purchases, completing a form-fill, adding a product to a shopping cart, and more) in households that have been targeted by your CTV ads, as compared to households that have not seen the ads. By creating an attribution model that can be utilized on any campaign, all within a day of the campaign’s launch, creates a huge opportunity to continue making optimizations that can maximize performance overall.

Connected TV also allows you to strategically display your ads to users who have already shown an interest in your brand, or a similar brand, to continue driving awareness and ultimately encourage conversions. CTV retargeting is smarter than other retargeting practices, as it allows you to display retargeted ads when and where your target audience is streaming content on a CTV device. Traditional TV ads are still served to massive audiences who may or may not be interested in what your ad has to say. CTV retargeting tracks the users who are more likely to engage with your message and allows you to continue communication throughout the marketing funnel.

By strengthening your campaign with targeting, marketers can reach ideal audiences, save money, achieve a higher ROI, and build brand recognition with compelling messaging.

A marketing strategy that leaves out CTV won’t make an impact and drive users down the marketing funnel as effectively as one with highly targeted ads on the big screen. CTV continues to be a standard in the marketing landscape, especially during one of the most competitive advertising seasons of the year. If you’re ready to start planning your connected TV strategy, contact a Choozle Account Manager today.

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Political Digital Advertising: Strategies & Best Practices

Choozle — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 04:32:27 +0000

Courthouse meet and greets aren’t enough to take home a win on election night anymore. As demographics in the electorate shift, political digital advertising campaigns need to be able to change the playbook and adapt to new technology that will propel them to victory.

Using programmatic advertising and tapping into exclusive ad inventory, digital campaigns are able to reach larger and far more diverse audiences than what has previously been possible in the advertising world.

Running Political Digital Advertising Campaigns with Choozle

Connected TV Advertising

Among the digital strategies we recommend for political campaigns, connected TV (CTV) advertising sits at the top of our list.

Connected TV, is content accessed via applications and streamed over internet-connected TVs, mobile, or over-the-top (OTT) devices, and CTV advertising allows you to serve ads on those devices and deliver a big-screen experience. Streaming services now command a greater share of viewers than cable, data published by Nielsen shows. That means apps like Netflix and other streaming platforms capture 38% of all television viewing, compared with 31% for traditional cable

Streaming services will retain a significant percentage of these viewers through the 2024 election, and working with Choozle will allow your organization to serve targeted ads to audiences in a much more effective manner than traditional television and with faster reporting.

Targeting Capabilities

When launching a campaign during the political season it is important you are reaching your target audience with accuracy. The extensive voter data and geotargeting capabilities through Choozle can connect your campaigns with accurate voter files in combination with congressional maps to ensure you are reaching the right people for your campaign.

Create detailed audiences that are matched with digital IDs based on the National Voter Registration File giving you access to all registered voters through the United States, our unique segments include swing voters, active military/veterans, and high-propensity voters.

With access to data partners like Aristotle, TargetSmart, and approximately 235 million voter records you’ll be able to make smart decisions, communicate the right people, test your messages, and measure public opinion with accuracy—while maximizing your return on investment.

The Changing Privacy & Compliance Landscape

Staying on top of changes in legislation and industry regulations around digital advertising can be a daunting task. Our team is able to help you navigate these laws to ensure that your political digital advertising campaign is not in violation of any local, state, or federal regulations.

The 2020 election cycle brought to light some shortcomings of digital advertising platforms and exposed actors that used these platforms to mislead consumers and violate user privacy. To combat this and to maintain our place as a top platform in the digital advertising sphere, Choozle is committed to following all local, state, and federal laws pertaining to digital advertising, as well as policies put in place by our industry partners.

Because of this, political advertisers face constraints in their targeting practices that are not imposed on non-political advertisers. Some things to keep in mind:

Seed audiences need to be larger than 5,000 unique users (that includes both cookies and devices) for all elections.
Dynamic creative optimization, or changing the creative based on data available at the time of ad serving, is prohibited.
Third-party ad serving is restricted to ad servers that have been pre-approved for political advertising campaigns.

In addition to the above limitations, Choozle also requires a questionnaire to be completed by the advertiser before launching campaigns. In this questionnaire, political campaign advertisers are required to supply the below information.

Election type (candidate, ballot measure/state, federal)
FEC ID or EIN
Treasure or Executive
Organization address and phone number
Payment method

Providing this information ensures that all advertisers wishing to engage in political activities are compliant with state or federal election laws, and also serves as a vetting method to confirm that no illegitimate campaigns or organizations are operating on the Choozle platform.

Optimizing Political Digital Advertising Campaigns

Brand Safety & Viewability

No one wants to pay for ads that can’t be seen or to have ads placed next to inappropriate content. Brand safety and viewability are two strategies that help mitigate these risks.

Brand safety refers to a set of tools and strategies that ensure your ads don’t appear in an inappropriate context or next to inappropriate content. Similar to how preferred lists and block lists let you filter sites, our brand safety solutions allow you to filter out specific categories of sensitive content.

Viewability is an online advertising metric that aims to track only impressions that can be seen by users and can help optimize a campaign in-flight.

Preferred lists & Block Lists

After identifying the sites that are driving traffic back to your website and the ones that aren’t, you can create preferred lists or block lists. A preferred list is an index of the sites where you want to serve ads, while block lists bar certain websites from serving your ads.

More on preferred lists and block lists here.

Ready to galvanize your political digital advertising? Partner with Choozle to programmatically launch your digital campaigns with accuracy, efficiency, and ease. We’ll help kick off your digital campaigns for the upcoming cycle. Reach out today to learn more about running digital marketing for political campaigning with Choozle.

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Back-to-School Advertising Best Practices with Third-party Data

Sarah Lilly — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 10:07:34 +0000

The 2024 back-to-school season is here, marking the second-highest shopping volume of the year, trailing only the holiday season, presenting a critical opportunity for retailers and brands to boost sales and gain insights into consumer behavior ahead of the holiday shopping period.

This season, however, brings unique challenges. While back-to-school sales are expected to exceed $81 billion, marking significant total sales, the growth rate is the slowest in five years. As the gap between back-to-school sales growth and total retail sales narrows, advertisers must employ innovative and data-driven strategies to stay competitive.

JUMP TO:
Navigating the Back-to-School Sales Landscape
Key Trends to Leverage for Back-to-School 2024
Strategic Approaches for Back-to-School Advertising
Channels to Maximize Your Reach

Navigating the Back-to-School Sales Landscape

Slower Growth Amid High Expectations
Back-to-school sales surged in 2023, reaching a staggering $78.68M in the US. However, 2024 marks a turning point. While the projected $81 billion in sales is impressive, the growth rate is slowing, reflecting a shift in consumer spending patterns and economic pressures. This slowdown demands a more strategic advertising approach, capturing consumer attention and driving conversions in a competitive market.

Shifts in Consumer Behavior
With economic uncertainties and evolving schooling formats, parents and students are becoming more selective and strategic in their back-to-school purchases. Although spending for K-12 students is robust, spending for college-bound students is expected to slow, influenced by shifting college enrollment trends and budget constraints. Additionally, the growth rates for physical retail are stabilizing, even as online and hybrid shopping experiences continue to thrive.

Key Trends to Leverage for Back-to-School 2024

Extended and Diverse Shopping Timelines
According to the National Retail Federation, parents are spreading their back-to-school shopping over a longer period, starting as early as June and extending into September. This extended timeline is partly due to ongoing supply chain issues and a desire to find the best deals. It provides multiple opportunities to engage with consumers and adjust marketing strategies to capture their attention throughout the summer.

Hybrid Shopping Experiences
Consumers continue to balance in-person shopping with online conveniences. Deloitte’s survey indicates that 41% of back-to-school budgets will be spent online, a slight increase from last year. Additionally, hybrid shopping options like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), and curbside pickup remain popular. These preferences highlight the need for flexible advertising strategies catering to online and offline shoppers.

Regional and Schooling Variations
Different regions exhibit varying preferences for in-person, hybrid, or remote schooling, influencing local shopping behaviors. Areas with predominantly in-person schooling may see higher demand for traditional supplies, while regions focusing on remote learning might prioritize technology and home learning aids. Tailoring your advertising strategy to these regional nuances can enhance relevance and effectiveness.

Strategic Approaches for Back-to-School Advertising

Leveraging Third-Party Data for Precision Targeting
Third-party data remains invaluable for reaching specific audiences during the back-to-school season. Platforms like Choozle provide access to detailed data segments from partners such as MasterCard, Dstillery, Oracle, and Dataonics. These segments help identify and reach in-market audiences based on their purchasing behaviors and interests, ensuring that your campaigns target those most likely to convert.

Relevant third-party data segments include:

Parents of school-age children: Identified through recent purchases of school-related items and activities.
Tech-oriented families: Targeted based on searches and transactions involving educational technology and remote learning tools.
Early planners: Consumers who typically begin their back-to-school shopping early to take advantage of deals and availability.

Embracing Contextual Targeting
Contextual targeting provides an alternative to third-party data by placing ads based on the content of web pages. This strategy aligns your advertisements with relevant content, such as educational blogs or parenting articles, ensuring your message reaches engaged audiences naturally. For example, placing ads for school supplies on websites discussing back-to-school preparation can resonate well with readers seeking such information.

Tapping Into Optimistic Consumer Sentiments
Consumers are drawn to positive and uplifting stories. Back-to-school campaigns highlighting themes of new beginnings, preparedness, and community resilience can tap into the enthusiasm of families gearing up for the new school year. Emphasizing readiness and the excitement of starting fresh can create a strong emotional connection with your audience, fostering trust and engagement.

Channels to Maximize Your Reach

Adopting an Omnichannel Strategy
Over the years, a consistently strong recommendation for digital advertising campaigns is not relying on just one channel to reach your target audience. An omnichannel approach is essential in 2024. Consumers expect a seamless experience across various platforms, from social media and search engines to e-commerce sites and physical stores. Your campaign should maintain a consistent presence across these channels, engaging customers wherever they are.

With big-box stores being the most popular choice for back-to-school shopping, retail media ad opportunities on platforms like Walmart and Amazon are worthwhile placements.

An omnichannel strategy aims to keep customers continually engaged with your ads so that when they are ready to buy, your brand is at the top of their minds, in the right place, and at the right time. For most marketers, understanding the dynamics of the new cross-channel customer behavior is the easy part. The challenge lies in aligning your marketing programs and ad spend with the influential moments and channels your audience responds to. Real-time reporting and optimization can help direct your ad spend to continue to reach audiences with effective means that drive conversions.

Focusing on Influential Moments
Understanding the key moments that drive purchasing decisions is crucial. For back-to-school shopping, these moments often occur in the weeks leading up to the school year, during major sales events, and around local school start dates. You can maximize your impact and ROI by aligning your ad spend with these critical periods.

Final Thoughts: Navigating Challenges and Seizing Opportunities

The 2024 back-to-school season offers significant opportunities but also presents challenges with its slower growth rate and changing consumer behaviors. Despite these challenges, the overall market remains robust, with significant spending on K-12 supplies and evolving shopping preferences.

To navigate this landscape, leveraging third-party data for precision targeting, embracing contextual targeting, and maintaining a strong omnichannel presence are key strategies. By aligning your campaigns with positive consumer sentiments and regional preferences, you can effectively connect with your audience during this vital retail period.

As families prepare for the new school year, a flexible and data-driven approach will ensure your back-to-school campaigns are impactful and relevant. Stay attuned to evolving trends and be ready to adapt as the season progresses, capturing a significant share of this essential retail event and setting the stage for a successful holiday season.

The post Back-to-School Advertising Best Practices with Third-party Data appeared first on choozle.

Amplifying Back-to-School Strategies with Retail Media

ANNIE WISSNER — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 13:47:42 +0000

Back-to-school season ranks among the most critical shopping events of the year, particularly for retailers offering education-related products, clothing, electronics, and more. According to the National Retail Federation, back-to-school spending is projected to reach $189.7 billion by 2028, with college supply spending expected to exceed $90 billion in 2024.

In this blog, we’ll explore how advertisers can tap into this lucrative market by harnessing the power of retail media and data. Leveraging platforms like Walmart DSP and Amazon DSP—both accessible through Choozle’s managed services—brands can connect with shoppers across various channels and devices. Advertisers can optimize their back-to-school campaigns by utilizing insights from retailers’ first-party data.

JUMP TO:
What are Retail Media and Data Providers?
Two of the Leading Retail Media and Data Providers
Best Practices for Using Retail Media and Data for Back-to-School Advertising Strategies

What are Retail Media and Data Providers?

Retail media and data providers are platforms and solutions that allow advertisers to access inventory across the open web and on retailers’ properties. These platforms offer several benefits for advertisers who want to optimize their back-to-school campaigns, such as:

Access to large and engaged audiences: Retailers have millions of customers who visit their websites, apps, and stores every week, looking for products and deals. By using their retail media and data platforms, advertisers can tap into these audiences and target them with relevant ads based on their shopping behavior, preferences, and intent.
Omnichannel reach and measurement: Retail media and data platforms enable advertisers to reach shoppers across multiple channels and devices, such as display, video, audio, mobile, and connected TV. Moreover, they allow advertisers to measure their ads’ impact on online and offline sales by connecting online and in-store transaction data. This gives advertisers a fuller picture of which specific digital and in-store ads played the greatest role in increasing conversions and helps them optimize current and future campaigns.
More data than ever before: Retail media and data platforms have become more sophisticated and abundant than ever, thanks to technological advancements and the growth of e-commerce. They leverage the power of AI, machine learning, and cloud computing to process and analyze vast amounts of data from various sources, such as purchase history, browsing behavior, product reviews, loyalty programs, geolocation, weather, and more. This allows advertisers to create more personalized and effective ads that resonate with shoppers at different stages of their journey.

Two of the Leading Retail Media and Data Providers

Walmart DSP
Walmart DSP is a demand-side platform that marries the power of The Trade Desk’s industry-leading technology with Walmart’s expansive omnichannel first-party data. This leads to a differentiated offer that allows advertisers to leverage Walmart audiences to serve ads across The Trade Desk’s inventory across the open web. Walmart DSP also offers exclusive access to Walmart’s inventory across its website, app, email newsletters, streaming service Vudu, connected TV devices like Roku TV Editions Smart Soundbar or Streambar Pro, etc.
Learn more about Walmart DSP here.

Amazon DSP
Amazon DSP is a demand-side platform that enables advertisers to programmatically buy display, video, audio, and mobile ads both on Amazon’s own properties (such as Amazon.com, IMDb, Fire TV, etc.) and across third-party sites and apps that are part of Amazon’s network. Amazon DSP also offers access to Amazon’s unique audience segments based on its rich first-party data from its e-commerce platform, Prime membership program, Alexa devices, etc.
Learn more about Amazon DSP here.

Best Practices for Using Retail Media and Data for Back-to-School Advertising Strategies

Advertisers should leverage best practices to use retail media and data for back-to-school advertising strategies.

Start early: Back-to-school shopping typically starts in July and peaks in August, but some shoppers may start even earlier or later, depending on their needs and preferences. Advertisers should plan on launching their campaigns in early June to capture the attention of early birds and continue until the end of September to reach latecomers. A campaign brief 6 weeks from the start date is recommended to ensure proper planning and setup.
Segment your audience: Not all back-to-school shoppers are the same. Depending on their age group, grade level, location, device type, etc., they may have different needs, preferences, budgets, and motivations. Advertisers should segment their audience based on these factors and tailor their ads accordingly. For example, college students may be more interested in laptops and dorm essentials than elementary school students, who may need backpacks and stationery.
Test different creatives: Advertisers should test different ad formats, sizes, colors, images, copy, calls to action, etc., to see which ones perform better for different segments and channels. They should also use dynamic creative optimization (DCO) tools that automatically generate and serve the most relevant ad variations based on real-time data.
Optimize your landing pages: Advertisers should ensure that their landing pages match their ads in terms of content, design, and offer. They should also ensure that their landing pages are fast-loading, mobile-friendly, easy to navigate, and have clear calls to action. They should also use retargeting tools that remind shoppers of the products they viewed or added to their cart but did not purchase.

The Bottom Line

Retail media and data are powerful tools for advertisers to boost their back-to-school campaigns and drive more sales. Using platforms like Walmart DSP and Amazon DSP, advertisers can reach large, engaged audiences across multiple channels and devices using retailers’ first-party data insights. They can also leverage more data than ever to create personalized and effective ads that resonate with shoppers at different stages of their journey.

Ready to supercharge your back-to-school campaigns? Dive into the world of retail media with Choozle’s managed services. Our expertise with Walmart DSP and Amazon DSP can help you tap into vast audiences and optimize your strategies with powerful first-party data insights.

Don’t miss out on connecting with millions of engaged shoppers. Start planning your campaign with Choozle today and make this back-to-school season your best! Get Started.

Sarah Lilly

Sarah Lilly, Product Marketing Manager at Choozle, brings the team a wealth of marketing experience. She began her career in digital advertising and later transitioned into product marketing. Collaborating extensively with cross-functional teams, Sarah refines product strategies to meet evolving market demands, ensuring that Choozle’s solutions remain at the forefront of digital advertising. In her spare time, you can find her curled up with a good book and her pup, Huey, or exploring Denver with friends.

The post Amplifying Back-to-School Strategies with Retail Media appeared first on choozle.