Many industries have a flagship event each year: for Hollywood, it’s the Oscars; for sports, it’s the playoffs or championships. For most brands, this pivotal time occurs in the fourth quarter. Given that this period is critical for brands, it follows that it is equally significant for retailers striving to capture consumer attention and drive sales.

When it comes to the holiday season, it is increasingly important for retailers to focus on their ecommerce strategy. Retailers often provide many more services and additional benefits to ecommerce purchasers, like quick shipping, easy returns, and loyalty programs, to differentiate from competitors. Retail media is emerging as another way for retailers to provide shoppers with additional benefits while also monetizing their inventory to balance those additional costs associated with running an ecommerce environment.

Ecommerce: Naughty or nice?

Historically, October through December have been the busiest shopping months of the year. We’ve all seen videos of people rushing into Walmart the second the doors open on Black Friday. However, with the surge in ecommerce over the past few years, those mobs have shrunk as shoppers become more dependent on online shopping.

Online sales growth was more than three times the growth rate of physical retail (8.8% vs. 2.8%) in the 2023 holiday shopping season, according to EMARKETER. Although ecommerce brings many presents for retailers, it can also come with a fair amount of coal as well.

In traditional brick-and mortar-shopping, it’s common for shoppers to make a purchase after discovering a new product compared to shoppers who discover a new product online. Some 31.5% of in-store shoppers will make a new product purchase right away compared to 19.1% of shoppers on an ecommerce website, according to a November 2023 EMARKETER survey. As a result, stores often compete on location in order to be closest to their target audience and shoppers.

With the rise of ecommerce, it’s common for shoppers to visit multiple websites, compare prices, and leave without making a purchase. This means retailers need to invest in a competitive and sophisticated ecommerce experience even for shoppers who are unlikely to make a purchase. Retail media can help offset the risks associated with running a competitive and sophisticated ecommerce shopping experience, especially during Q4.

The retail media revelation

Retail media has emerged as a channel for retailers to offset the risks and costs associated with running an ecommerce business by providing a new high-margin revenue stream. Retail media monetizes the blank space and traffic on a retailer site to offset the low conversion rate and high costs associated with ecommerce. Retailer margins in retail media are anywhere from 70% to 90% for onsite inventory, according to BCG estimates, which helps offset many of those ecommerce costs and risks.

With Mirakl Ads, retailers gain access to a fully self-service yield management tool to control their retail media strategy in real-time, and analyze results with live-data dashboards. This retail media monetization and control with Mirakl Ads is essential for any retailers to operate, continuously invest, and enhance in their ecommerce model and keep shoppers engaged.

Retail media ads are designed to be helpful and provide the shopper with recommendations and suggestions based on items they might be interested in, which is exactly what shoppers are looking for. Some 60% of shoppers go directly to a product they want to purchase when they head to a retail website to make a purchase, according to Episerver research. This gives retailers a ton of opportunity to provide shoppers with recommendations for products they might be interested in.

Mirakl Ads looks at a shopper profile, purchase history, and items currently in their cart to provide retail media product recommendations that relate to the shopper and increase the likelihood of a conversion for the retailer. Retailers have full control to customize their retail media strategy and preferences by page type or category. Mirakl Ads helps retailers create the ideal shopping experience for their customers.

Retailers and brands: Better together

Most advertisers tend to use three buying platforms for a campaign, an Advertiser Perceptions survey found. With so many retail media platforms available, why should a brand or advertiser select yours? This is where retailers can differentiate themselves from the pack by partnering with brands to provide exceptional opportunities in the holiday season.

Retailers and brands can take advantage of the engaged holiday shoppers already in-market by hosting joint promotional campaigns to incentivize shoppers to visit a retailer and purchase a product. With the surge in in-market audiences, partnerships between retailers and brands can be mutually beneficial, allowing retailers to gain advertising investment while brands get greater exposure and reach.In fact, brands can benefit from a captivated audience during the holiday season. By acquiring a new customer during the holiday season, brands now have an opportunity to create brand loyalty and retain their customers throughout the coming year.

Brands that advertised with retail media in 2022 saw an increase in favorability between Q1 (2.0%) and Q4 (3.3%), Kantar research found. Mirakl Ads gives retailers the tools they need to better partner with brand advertisers. Through sophisticated features like retailer offers, predictive analytics forecasting, and full funnel solutions, Mirakl Ads gives retailers all the tools they need to attract advertisers and create valuable lasting partnerships across their ecommerce environment.

Get ahead of the holiday hype with retail media

Setting up an ecommerce program comes with its fair share of challenges, but retail media helps mitigate many of those risks. Retail media provides retailers with the tools they need to make their holiday season, and the holiday season of their brands, as successful as possible during the busiest shopping time of the year. Learn how Mirakl Ads can transform your retail media strategy today.

—Michael Nocera, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Mirakl Ads