Retailers have new friends in their battle to steal ad dollars from Amazon: Meta and Google.
Recently, there has been a flurry of deals between retail companies and giant platforms. Instacart is making YouTube ads shoppable. Shopify is expanding to Canada a program that buys Meta and Google ads on behalf of merchants. And Kroger inked a deal to sell targeted Meta ads for grocery-focused brands.
The deals show how retailers are expanding their ad businesses off of their own e-commerce websites to vie for big ad budgets. As more retailers stand up advertising businesses, advertisers are increasingly asking to reach a bigger audience of people on big platforms. So retailers are using their data about shoppers to granularly target ads and measure whether they drive sales beyond their own e-commerce websites. Target, for example, makes 35% of its ad revenue from websites it doesn’t own.
The goal is to compete with Amazon’s $46 billion ad business, which is largely built using Amazon’s own technology and staff.
Plus, as third-party cookies disappear and regulators crack down on privacy, Meta and Google’s so-called walled gardens, which control how ads are bought and tracked, insulate retailers from some of digital advertising’s headwinds.
Ross Walker, a retail-media team lead at the ad agency Acadia, said these partnerships help retailers compete with Amazon without needing to invest heavily in building ad products. Amazon, for its part, also has a partnership with Meta that allows people to link their Amazon and Meta accounts to buy advertised products.
“We’re in a position where it’s expensive to buy tech — it’s easier to partner,” Walker said. He added that these partnerships also help Meta and Google capitalize on the growth in e-commerce advertising.
Retailers are reworking their partnerships
Retailers have long partnered with platforms, but the new wave of deals is structured differently to focus more on data and measurement. Previously, retailers worked with Meta and Google to buy co-branded ads on behalf of brands.
“They’re not just buying ads — it’s connecting the pipes on the backend so that the measurement is there, too,” said Andrew Lipsman, an independent retail media analyst at Media, Ads + Commerce.
Kroger, for example, has long had a relationship with Meta but recently announced a new partnership. Kroger’s advertising arm, called Kroger Precision Marketing, is pitching advertisers on its data about what grocery shoppers buy and plugging that data into Meta’s AI tool called Advantage+ to target and measure ads. Advantage+ uses machine learning to find the best ad and platform. The ads that Kroger sells will lead people to Kroger’s e-commerce website where they can buy products, said Cara Pratt, SVP of Kroger Precision Marketing.
Instacart is working with YouTube to let advertisers target ads based on someone’s shopping behavior on Instacart. Instacart manages the campaigns for CPG brands, and can target formats like Shorts, pre-roll, and mid-roll across YouTube. People who click on a “shop now” button on the ads are directed to Instacart’s website or app to purchase the product from a retailer within Instacart’s network.
Instacart
And Shopify is seeing that its data can find merchants new customers on Meta and Google. Last year, Shopify launched a program in the US called Shop Campaigns that helps merchants acquire new customers on the consumer-facing storefront Shop. Earlier this year, Shopify started buying Meta and Google ads on behalf of merchants as part of the program. Shopify recently announced that the program is available for merchants to target people in Canada. Andrius Baranauskas, director of product at Shopify, said that the program has helped merchants find more than one million new customers.
“The scale is increasing,” Baranauskas said about Shopify’s ad-buying on Meta and Google.
Retailers want to prove that social ads can drive sales
To succeed with platform partnerships, retailers need to convince brands to move big ad budgets beyond the shopper marketing budgets that advertisers traditionally spend.
Kroger Precision Marketing’s Pratt said that Kroger is also pitching Meta ads to social advertisers as performance ad formats. Advertisers typically buy social ads to increase big branding goals like awareness, but retailers want to prove that social ads also drive sales.
“There’s, of course, a role to play for broad awareness campaigns, but more consumers are demanding and expecting more seamless connection into commerce,” she said.
Lipsman said that retail media is cutting into big budgets like TV and social media, but there isn’t a consistent type of budget for retailers to go after.
“The reality is that it comes from anywhere,” he said. “They’re up for discussion, and there is incremental budget every year.”