Peapod Digital Labs, a division of Dutch grocery giant Ahold Delhaize, has partnered with Quotient to develop a tool that ties programmatic media buys for promotional campaigns to real-time analysis of loyalty and pricing data to drive sales lift for retailers and CPGs.
The technology, for which Quotient has applied for a patent, will be used initially at Ahold’s U.S.-based grocery brands, which include 2,000 stores along the East coast under the Stop & Shop, Giant Food, Giant Food Stores, Hannaford and Food Lion banners, but is available generally as well.
While print circulars have been the main vehicle for communicating temporary price reductions (TPRs) at grocery stores, most consumers aren’t getting the memo in the digital era. According to Quotient, CPG advertisers run an average of 2,000+ TPRs each week to drive sales, but only 10% are made visible to consumers through weekly circulars. And TPRs on shelf price tags can be easily missed – especially as more grocery buying has shifted online.
The Quotient/Peapod tool combines POS and loyalty data with TPR pricing feeds, triggering programmatic digital media buys and tapping the brand’s custom creative on the Quotient platform. Media is delivered to granular audiences, amplifying the TPR, with the impact on sales tracked and reported.
“The concept of trying to time a media campaign when an item is on sale is not new,” said Mark Williamson, VP of retail media for Peapod Digital Labs. “What is new is now it can be done automatically and programmatically. We think it adds a layer of efficiency, allowing the two sides of CPG, the retailer and the brand manager, to work in concert without aligning calendars and spreadsheets. It takes the guesswork out, opening up a new frontier in retail media capabilities.”
Williamson said Peapod Digital Labs and Quotient began work on the tool in earnest last June, and by the fall had established the data feeds needed to trigger the media campaigns; beta tests with CPG partners were conducted in Q4. One CPG saw a 6.4% sales lift during a one-week campaign using media buys amplified with the tool, he said.
“We set up the analytics and diagnostics in January and February, and shared test results in March,” he said. “Now it’s ready to scale and get more learnings, and we’re reaching out to all our CPG partners.”
David Johnson, SVP sales for Quotient, said with all the commoditization in CPG and grocery, retailers and brands need strong data and analytics to break out of the noise and attract consumers when they’re in buying mode.
“Say Quaker has a promotion in stores during a particular week,” Johnson said. “We want to get down to the level in the dataset of attracting someone who buys a certain flavor and size, and deliver it to them when they’re off site and in a shopping mindset. We can know the cycle of when they activate coupons, and how quickly the redeem them after activation. It’s all in a strong contextual engagement with the media unit. It’s way different than anything done in the marketplace right now.”