Walmart’s new data play and what marketers need to know: Datacenter Weekly
Also: Your guide to Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022, macroeconomic news in a nutshell and more.
Koichiko
Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals.
Walmart’s latest data play
“Walmart is edging closer to a full-fledged loyalty program with the launch of Walmart Rewards, which gives customers cash back via supplier-funded deals that could help the retailer capture data from tens of millions of additional people,” reports Ad Age’s Jack Neff, who notes that the program is an outgrowth of Walmart’s previous collaboration with Ibotta.
Why it matters for marketers: Neff adds that the program, which is already being used by some marketers such as Procter & Gamble Co., “could fuel more brand spending via the Walmart Connect media business. That’s because it will give brands something new to advertise—the rebates they’re offering—and generate more targeting opportunities through better data.” P&G recently offered $3 in rewards to Walmart customers buying three Pantene products at once.
Essential context: “The rewards are available only to people using the Walmart app to make purchases online or in-store via Walmart Pay, so it captures purchase data for program users,” Neff notes. “Amazon and club store retailers already can link all, or virtually all, of their purchases to individual members or customers.”
What you need to know about first-party data
“Brands think they have found the answer to the big data problem hounding digital marketing, as regulations and privacy policies confound other means of collecting consumer information, and the answer is: zero-party data,” Ad Age’s Garett Sloane writes.
What that means: “Instead of relying on third parties to discretely gather datasets, identify people and track their habits online and in real life, zero-party data is when a brand straight-up asks a customer for data,” Sloane explains.
How it works: “It is collected through prompts like online quizzes and greeting people on a website, app or in an ad,” Sloane adds. “If a consumer participates, all these signals then get used to personalize marketing, and the brand considers that express consent to use the data for further marketing—it is in the fine print. Consumers are being enticed to share personal information by offering rewards, loyalty points, special offers and more to keep feeding the data machine.”
The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter.
Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Joy R. Lee.
This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.
