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Sale off site adsas they are referred to, it allows a retailer to expand its advertising inventory. And advertisers can target a unique set of consumers based on how they interacted with the retailer over time. But in some cases, off-site doesn’t turn into cash the way retailers had hoped, said Sean Cheyney, head of media sales at Vistar Media.
“The off-site media has started to sputter a little bit here in the last few months,” Cheyney said. “What we’re going to see next year is retailers taking a step back and saying, ‘What is our data strategy?’
To compete in the coming months (and years), trade media networks need to find the right data tools and partners to package their first-party data in a way that is more attractive to advertisers – and unique in an increasingly crowded industry.
“We’re going to start seeing a lot of retailers launching their own clean rooms and creating a better, tighter relationship, data-wise, with their suppliers,” Cheyney explained. Data strategy will more clearly become part of the overall strategy of a sales media campaign, he added.
Gen AI acquisition continues but requires scalability
Generative artificial intelligence it has lost some of its novelty at this point, creating skeptics, particularly among marketing executives who control budgets.
Experts agree that the practical applications of gen AI are critical moving into 2025. The time of 800 pilots and no scaled solutions – something that the managing director of BCG and senior partner Mark Abraham recounted hearing from a client in 2024 – it’s definitely over.
“The CFO is very tired,” Abraham said.
Alongside healthy skepticism and driver fatigue, however, Abraham expects improvements “under the hood” AI applications. For example, campaign automation, measurement, A/B testing, personalization and optimization – all things that can improve speed and adaptability in marketing.
AI is starting to “dramatically transform traditional agencies,” said Eric Brackmann, vice president of trade media at Koddi. “This is going to spill over into the retail media space, the business media space.”
The death of research
As GenAI reshapes the way people ask for, find and learn new information, search as we know it will fall by the wayside, Brackmann of Koddi predicts.
“Research is not going to be a thing, in the long run,” he said. “I see a world, not in the not-too-distant future, where you look at a retailer’s website and AI knows what you’re looking for based on your shopping patterns, based on the content you’ve engaged with, based on who you are and where you are in the world.”
