Hello and welcome to another episode of Retail Media Thursdays. Today I'm going to be talking to Andrew Pearl from Profitero about all things digital shelf, activation and case studies. So sit back and enjoy. Andrew, welcome to Retail Media Thursdays.
Firstly, tell us a little bit about your role at Profitero. Yeah, thanks Matt and thanks for the invitation. So I'm VP of Industry Insights, I've been at Profitero nearly eight years now and I work, I guess two things, working very closely with the marketing team to produce a lot of our great thought leadership on the digital shelf and e-commerce and how brands can use our data, but also getting out and meeting our clients and talking at industry events and really understanding about the importance of the digital space. e-commerce and how Insight can drive that. So yeah, really excited.
Get to meet a lot of people but also work with some great team as well. Excellent and yeah, tell us a little bit about a peak or a highlight of the week so far. It can be personally or professionally, whatever you'd like to choose.
Right... Well, I think, I mean, yesterday, and this sounds corny, but yesterday I just went out and visited a client. And it was the first time for a long time, you think about post-COVID, we had a workshop together, really understood what their problems were.
And it sounds silly that, you know, it's great. We're sitting across a table in a pub today, but just being together, understanding each other's issues and how we can fix it was great. And it was just, it's really refreshing to be there in the same place.
Yeah, from a personal point of view, both my son and my daughter are big football fans. One is Tottenham, one is Chelsea. Both struggling a little bit at the moment so I'm not sure there's a highlight there but perhaps we'll stick with the professional one.
So one of them might have a highlight on Thursday when they play each other right. That's it, that's it. And we're here in Windsor so tell us a little bit about why you chose this pub and why we're here. Yeah, great, lovely to be in this pub here.
I mean we're in the perfect position. Literally 200 metres that way is Windsor Castle. Just absolutely stunning, we're very fortunate. One of our colleagues from the US came over here and said it was like working in a film set.
That's a castle dating back to the 1100s and literally 200 metres that way is our office. So we're in a pretty good spot, this is right in the middle and Windsor is a great place to work. So yeah, it seemed like the obvious place.
Excellent. So let's go into your role now and a bit more around digital shelf data. So there are varying degrees of adoption of digital shelf data within brands, agencies and advertisers. So what is digital shelf data to you? How would you define it?
And how does it give value to those organizations, especially within retail media? Yeah, I mean, I always like to cut things really simple. And I think at its simplest level, it's really about how your brand...
is perceived online. It's that kind of the online equivalent of where you feature in-store, both on and off fixture. But I think if we're talking about, particularly looking at areas like retail media, focus on two key areas, and that is about visibility and conversion. So if we start off with visibility, it's about understanding, it's so important, is your brand available to buy simply on a retailer website on a daily basis? So we're collecting that every single day.
And we do see a lot of media execution or keyword sponsorship happening with brands where they've actually got poor availability. So it's really wasting investment. The second one is search.
Search, obviously, all important. We're monitoring thousands of keywords for our clients, really helping to understand how they can win from an organic point of view. So how can they get to those all-important top spots? If they do it organically, we see sales moving from page two to page one up to those top spots of almost doubling, up to 99% increase.
So that's important. But when you think about retail media, what are my competitors doing in terms of sponsorship? Where do I need to focus? Where do I need to attack?
And where do I need to defend? So that's what our data shows. And that's all about visibility.
Secondly, conversion. Again, sadly, a lot of retail media is executed on products and brands where they're not likely to convert that increased traffic into a purchase. So it may be they've got...
Poor content or the content that they're expecting to see on a retailer website isn't what's actually appearing. And that's what we do. We're checking that every single day.
In other words, we're also helping them benchmark their content versus the competitors. So is their competitor more likely to convert? If you're driving perhaps to a category page, are their competitors more likely to get that ultimate purchase? So how can we help them do that? And the ratings reviews as well, we all know that's hugely important.
I'm the shopper, I know, I look at reviews all the time. So helping them understand where they benchmark versus their competitors. And then finally pricing as well.
So obviously not something they can influence directly but important when they're thinking about media execution. How are they from a competitive point of view on the pricing side of things. So all of those, we're monitoring those every single day, about 1200 retailers across the globe and ultimately it's about helping our clients sell more online but also helping in their execution of things like retail media because It's just one of those areas like availability or content or search.
If one of those is going wrong or underperforming, then your media execution is going to suffer as a result. So really important that you can combine the understanding of the digital shelf with your media execution to make that media spend more efficient. That perfectly leads on to my next question, which I think it's fair to say, based on what you just said, that we have a shared perspective of. digital shelf data being more valuable and more powerful when linked to activation levers. So can you give some examples or an example of a brand or an advertiser that's using your data in a really meaningful or innovative way?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've been at Profitero nearly eight years now. And I think when I started, a lot of conversations with brands is why you need to have data.
Now everyone understands it, but now it's the next stage is, OK, how do I use that data to execute more efficiently? And this is why I think Profitero, our partnership with... with Sky is fantastic because it's really putting the digital shelf data at the heart of where media is being executed.
So yeah, I can think of a couple, two, three examples where the execution of getting that data really makes the media much more efficient. First one is really just about saving time. So we have a, there's a global healthcare client who has combined, we combine our Profiterra data into your Sky platform. And they were spending anything up to about 20 hours a week just trying to understand why their media performance was, you know, up and down sometimes. Huge amount of time, lots of teams, manual effort.
But by having the Profiterra data now connected to Sky and where it's actually executed, not only have they managed to halve that time, but they've also getting direct alerts of things like if their competitors go out of stock or, you know, if their content changes, which means they can react much more quickly. So it's saving a lot of time. The second one is about how also it can really drive much more, sort of, there are many sort of additional benefits including making media more efficient so we have a global nail care brand who again integrated the Profitero data into the Sky platform and what happened is so we're collecting availability data for their their products and also their competitors so as soon as one of their competitors out of stock we have a rule set up in Amazon in Sky sorry so that you start to increase your bidding on certain keywords and by doing that they managed to get increase their share of page but I think most importantly and most excitingly just by really reacting when their competitors were out of stock and using opportunity they saw almost a 50% increase in new to brand buyers so these are buyers they just haven't been able to reach before but by having that automation having the data Profitero linked with Sky you could you could automate that execution and actually they were able to do it at a cheaper cost so great way of getting new buyers A final one, and I had great honour of talking, so in the public we can talk about this with Kraft Heinz, I spoke about this on the Digital Food and Beverage conference earlier this year. Again, using Profiterra data combined with Sky. where as soon as any of their competitors go out of stock or buy box, then again, we have a rule set up so they can automatically start increasing their bidding on keywords.
And even during events like really high traffic, competitive events like Prime Day, you can actually use that to drive better performance. So by doing that, they actually saw, by using this rule within Sky and using the Profitero data, they actually saw an 8% increase on Prime Day on their return, on their spend, which is fantastic, and a similar decline, about an 8% decline in the cost. of that execution. So they were getting more sales and I think what's more important, all of this, getting more sales, better return, but keeping their spend exactly the same.
They're just making it that much more efficient. And I think just by getting that data close to the point of execution really drives some huge uplifts and that's what we're really excited about now and we're seeing more and more benefits going forwards. Excellent.
I just want to pivot back to something that you mentioned earlier around benchmarking. And so you've been at Profiterra for several years now in another commerce role. So you've offered various bits of research and thought leadership during that time, especially around organizational benchmarks.
And obviously the challenge within the industry is around standardization. So what strategies or tips would you give to organizations? around the different strategies they can run around standardization and alleviating any sort of data concerns there or standardization as a whole.
Yeah it's great so our global benchmark report is something we're really proud of we're actually going to it's about to launch later this year it's going to be our eighth edition which is great so we think it's one of the sort of the oldest and most complete benchmarking surveys there is out there at the moment in the world of e-commerce and we talk to brands across the world and Again, over my years, things have changed significantly. As I mentioned, going from having to persuade brands to use data to now really understand how they can share it throughout their organization. I think, if I was to summarize what happened really over the last year or two, is there's been vast amounts of change, structural change in organizations. Two-thirds of all our brands who completed it said that they've been through some structural change in the last couple of years.
And yet the problem is when we ask them, okay, so how do you feel you're performing as a result? The majority said at best they just feel they're keeping up with their competition. So all this structural change and they're not really accelerating their growth any further. And I think the reason behind that is that whilst there's a lot of structural change going on, it's not being backed up by the right behaviours being put in place. So in the report we go into more detail about things that, recommendations that clients do in areas like people, you know, how to organise the teams.
and the process they put in place so how to talk with retailers um but also partnerships you know what sort of things they can do and perhaps just want to look at a couple of areas that talked earlier about how getting digital shelf data combined with uh media execution like through the sky platform can really help drive it i think that that area of wasting time is or avoiding the wasting time which i'd say is one where we we try and spend a lot of focus. So actually, all our brands now, they have digital shelf data, but very few of them, I think it's about one in five, are using digital shelf data to understand if they're content changes what are the changes that really drive uh drive growth and what are the things they've done that have actually made no difference at all and so it might be again we know that adding things like adding a video to a product page on amazon you can see sales uplifts of up to close to 40 but it's not always the same and it very much differs by category so much courage bands to use that data in a way to really if you make the changes use it to diagnose what's worked what hasn't and avoid wasting wasting your time on the things that don't. So that's one area.
Another area, and if we again focus on retail media, is about organisation. So from the feedback from the survey, the majority of our brands again, round about actually a quarter of their total media spend, so their global media spend, goes specifically on retail media. And yet it's not, the way it's being executed is far from optimal at the moment.
And that's all down to the structure they've got in place. When we see a big sort of disparity between ownership of on-site media, so classic online media, retail media, and off-site. Typically on-site owned by e-commerce teams, shop and marketing teams, whereas the off-site media often owned by brand teams.
Not in every case, but that was certainly the majority. And the problem is, and I know I've... Prior to Profiterra, I worked 15 years on brands, with brands like Mars and McCormick.
And the silos appear in all these organizations, right? But the problem is those silos create problems with execution. Again, just to give you an example, we do a lot of monitoring of big events and one of the big ones that we always look at is the Super Bowl, one of the biggest TV events in the US, certainly from a TV and media point of view. And one of the brands that won or had the highest growth this year was it was a beauty brand it was not one of the biggest but they were on TV during the game and then if you went on to Amazon in the break to go and buy their product they were actually nailing it in terms of owning all retail media connected to their keywords they were owning the keyword sponsorship so you had no chance but to buy their products and you contrast that with I won't name them but there was a global food brands who were on TV during the game but if you went on Amazon to buy their product actually it was their competitor who was owning the media, owning the sponsorship.
So it was their competitors really benefiting from the TV spend, driving greater traffic to Amazon. And that's just a classic example where those silos just break down media execution. So it's easy to say, I know, and very, very hard to do.
But I think it's about just getting the right teams together. If you're driving on-site, off-site media, making sure that the teams understand what they're doing, first of all, but also that they have the data. Again, too much.
Traffic is driven by... or too much time is spent on driving traffic to a retailer website, but for brands that are having problems perhaps with content or poor availability. And so you're wasting that investment. And if teams make use of the data, then the execution is going to be better and you're going to get much greater return for the money you spend.
Fair enough. And yeah, so Profiterio was recently acquired by Publicis. So what would you say is this consolidation that's happening within the industry?
What's the reason behind it? And what can you see? see in the future in terms of those consolidations and also with your brand background um what would you say are tips for brands when selecting tech or ad partners in the future with these consolidations happening yes it's it's been quite a quite a whirlwind so when i started eight years ago profitero we didn't have a specific office in the uk i think there were about four of us in in in the uk You know, we're now part of a multi-billion dollar organisation and one of the largest media agencies. It's a very exciting change. I think it goes without saying, we all know the huge explosion of retail media.
You could all pick numbers out. We have slightly different numbers. The ones I saw just yesterday was $4 billion worth of expenditure in the UK this year. expected to be kind of leading in europe and that's almost going to double by 2027 so retail media is is one of the fastest growing areas and we hear that a lot from our clients the challenge is is that there's they're spending more and yes they're growing but we call it kind of blind growth and and they don't really know why they're growing and actually they're probably missing out on opportunities uh like they spoke with craft times and like with that nail care where the the competitor goes out of stock and they can actually use that to conquest it.
So that's, I think, where the publicist acquisition of Profiterra makes complete sense. It's making execution of media that much more efficient by just getting the data that the brands already have, making it work harder, helping them to understand, you know, what are those key drivers and what do they need to do more to make it more efficient? So brands should ask themselves, is my data being used in the right way?
Is it being used to optimize my media? So Yes, you might have different teams that connected them, but is there a way that I can connect the two? Now, whether that's through something like Profiterra and Sky or working with your media agency, do they have data, digital shelf data like Profiterra that they can make use of?
And so, yeah, we're very excited. I think it's so that integration has really come about and really been accelerated as part of this publicist acquisition. So it's brought around huge change for us.
I think there's a lot more exciting things to come. But, yeah. It's really, again, it's all about just making that data work better, work harder, and getting better execution of your retail media.
Cool. And so looking into the future, what do you see as the next big thing within commerce data or management capabilities? And how do you personally hope to contribute to that?
Yeah, well... We talked about shelf intelligent media and I think it's at the moment it's very much kind of like the on-site the retail media I think that's that's going to continue to evolve and we're already sort of testing with some of our publicist clients we're using combining our data to support programmatic media as well that's that's a whole new new area and that's that's very exciting about how again how digital shelf data can can do that. I'm trying to think of how to answer this without mentioning AI but I can't do it so I'm going to have to say AI.
And the next, so we were already working with Shelf Intelligent Media. I think the next obvious one is Shelf Intelligent Content as well. So it's how we have a tool that uses neural language learning, AI, to kind of determine the right keywords and the right written content that should be in your titles and descriptions.
And at the same time, we're connecting that to our system and to asset management systems. So in one closed loop, we can make recommendations on content. A client can change it and then it can automatically syndicate it out. And that's using AI to understand what's the best content for that. Now that's live now.
The next stage, of course, is visual content. I know some of our clients and some brands are... Trying it, it's a bit of the Wild West out there and I know brand owners are very very nervous of it but that's the obvious next stage and that will come over the coming years.
So again it comes back to the same thing it's about how data can make it work harder. Personally I'm in a very fortunate position where I get to speak to a lot of e-commerce leaders at a regional and global level and really understanding what their challenges are and also helping them get the right structure in place and I think If we can do that and help them break down these silos, get them using the data more, combined with all this new technology that's coming on board, then we've got a very exciting future ahead. Very interesting.
So data and AI, the big players. That's it, I know. I know it's pretty predictable I know but it's definitely the way forward.
Should we do some quickfire questions now? Why not, let's go for it. So it sounds like there's a football split allegiance in your household, so what's your football team?
Well it was Tottenham originally, that was because of my son and then my daughter threw the Lionesses. She was never really interested in football and then the Lionesses through their success is as obsessed, in fact more obsessed than my son now. So I've been to last...
Last week, actually, I was at Stamford Bridge with my daughter, my wife, and we were seeing Barcelona in the semi-final of the Champions League. Not the result we wanted, sadly. But, yeah, so I've been a bit more Chelsea recently.
I have to go back to Tottenham again, I think, in the near future. OK. And do you think England will win the Euros this summer?
I'd like to think so. We know it's always painful being England supporters. I would hope so.
Yeah, it's very exciting. I think they've got the strength to do it, but we will see. Favourite TV series that you've recently watched? Oh, there's a lot.
I'm a sucker for a bit of reality TV, I'm afraid. We've just started the series two of Blue Lights again last night. Okay, I haven't seen that.
Yeah, no, that's good. But yeah, I'd try and claim it's because of... I'm watching it because of my daughter or my wife's watching it.
But yeah, a bit of a sucker for a bit of reality TV. That's always the way. People are like, yeah, I feel guilty. But actually, it's my guilty pleasure.
Guilty pleasure, yeah. Favorite holiday destination? Yeah, travel. I've been very fortunate.
I've done a lot of travel in my life. I did French at university. I just love going to France.
We very fortunately went and had a holiday in the south of France a couple of years ago. It's just stunning. You can't beat it.
Guaranteed weather. Beautiful, good food, good wine, yeah. Pretty good, really.
And if you were to choose a celebrity that I would like to take to France with you, who would you choose? I think I'd, for my daughter I'd pick Emma Hayes, who's the Chelsea manager, currently still just about. And we'll have to go with Harry, let's keep it, Harry Kane for my son. Yeah, so that'd be good, we'll have some good interesting football conversations. A good kick about by the sound of it.
And that too, yes. So you're sat on the beach in France, your holiday destination of choice, what is your drink of choice? I can't be British and say it's a Pim's, is it?
That wouldn't work in the south of France. I think it would be a nice, crisp sort of French Sauvignon, something like that. It's got to be a... I try and be classy on the beaches in France, so maybe something like that. Excellent.
I probably should say a beer in reality, but let's keep it to something classy. Double part, that's absolutely fine. That's fine.
Excellent. Well, Andrew, it's been great chatting to you. Thank you very much for joining us on Retail Media Thursdays. Excellent.
Thanks, Matt. It's been an absolute pleasure.