Sam's Club upgrades retail media network with new targeting and retargeting capabilities

Sam’s Club is rolling out a major upgrade to its targeting and retargeting capabilities less than a year after launching its Member Access Program retail media network.

The new system, which will lean on third-party performance measurement via IRI, can be applied on the open web anywhere Sam’s partner The Trade Desk buys programmatically, including the use of artificial intelligence-fueled in-flight campaign optimization. Sam’s also will partner with LiveRamp for data permission and access controls to safeguard privacy in collaborations with supplier brands.

It all aims, among other things, to prevent common digital retargeting miscues like inundating people with ads for big-screen TVs they just bought. But it can also be applied to faster-cycle consumer goods, preventing targeting people with Charmin ads right after they’ve bought a club-store pack of toilet paper, or turning on ads four to six weeks later when they’re likely to be in the market again. Although Sam’s interest is in optimizing ad targeting toward its own customers, such data may also inform decisions on open web targeting of Sam’s customers regardless of where they end up buying.

Sam’s MAP targeting system can also take advantage of a counter-intuitive feature of the retailer’s growing online store pickup ordering business. Many people who stop at stores to pick up orders end up going inside anyway, and 50% to 60% of them come into the store within five days, said Austin Leonard, head of sales for Sam’s Club MAP.

The ability to target based on when people are likely to arrive at a physical store and what they’re already picking up is one unique aspect Sam’s can offer that most other retail media can’t, said Sarah Hofstetter, president of Publicis Groupe’s commerce analytics platform Profitero.

“We call it ‘Win the second cart,’” Leonard said. Knowing when a shopper is arriving for a pickup can help brands sell complementary items. Or, when people buy competitor products, brands can have a good idea of when they’ll be back in the market based on common purchase cycles and time follow-up ads appropriately.

Marketers have been using retargeting with retail data for years, but the billions of transactions and dispersed locations make it challenging for them to actually grow business with it, Leonard said. That’s one reason, along with protecting member data, that all access to the platform will be through managed service at this point, he said. “We’ve got a pretty big analytics, media buying and operations team,” he said.

“We’ve been waiting a long time to be able to retarget using the real-time data that Sam’s Club has,” said Mic Zavarella, VP of marketing at PepsiCo, in a statement. “This allows us to automate targeting, personalize messaging and create sophisticated media workflows that maximize the efficiency of our campaigns.”

“We’re excited to see the power of omnichannel data come to retargeting that can drive both performance and brand awareness at scale,” said Tony DiMattia, director and head of shopper marketing at Nestle Purina.

Sam’s MAP provides direct measurement of post-campaign sales lift using control group testing comparing shoppers who were or were not exposed to ads, Leonard said.  Sam’s is also working with IRI to eventually provide in-flight ad performance measurement, he said.

“The big difference for us is that we do have a third party that does all the measurement” via IRI, he said, “whereas many other retailers just have in-house measuring. We do think that’s helping make sure we’re not grading our own homework.”