How Rokt complements retail media networks

The untapped opportunity for retail media networks

Retailers unlocked nearly $50 billion in revenue¹ in 2022 through retail media, primarily by helping brands influence customer purchasing behavior before they checkout. A retail media network is an advertising platform that operates within a retailer’s ecosystem, allowing brands to serve targeted ads to shoppers as they browse product pages, search for items, or complete purchases. As the expiration of third-party cookies hangs in the balance, access to rich, first-party data is giving retail media networks an edge over other digital advertising mediums as it has more ability to personalize the shopping experience for visitors. While they were built to allow endemic brands to influence what’s being added to carts, they weren’t built to optimize the post-purchase experience – for the retailer or the customer. Once the customer reaches the payments page, a retail media network’s influence stops. For ecommerce retailers, this means there are millions of dollars of incremental revenue being left on the table.

However, there’s a way to combat this challenge and continue driving relevancy and revenue post-purchase. Rokt’s advanced machine learning technology, which has been used by global ecommerce partners across billions of transactions, complements retail media networks by allowing retailers to tailor offers and messages to each individual customer, from cart to confirmation page.

How Rokt can complement your retail media strategy

Many retailers work hard to personalize the customer experience on the path to purchase, however rarely are businesses applying this relevancy through acquisition, purchase and post purchase. Our machine learning instantly renders the content and experience that each shopper is most likely to respond to, delivering more relevant customer experiences and unlocking incremental revenue across the transaction moment. Rokt complements retail media networks by:

• Leveraging first-party customer data to reveal the next best action: According to a 2022 Salesforce study², 73% of shoppers expect for companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. With the tightening of data privacy laws and third-party cookies on their way out, the ability to harness first-party data to optimize, personalize, and monetize the customer experience is essential for retailers. Rokt acts as a trusted intermediary, enabling retailers and advertisers to leverage their first-party data to deliver 1:1 customer relevancy – without anyone needing to share their first-party data with anyone else. Using advanced machine learning, Rokt processes a retailer’s first-party data on the current customer and their cart in real-time. The platform then utilizes lookalike modeling based on similar customer attributes and similar carts across Rokt’s closed network to predict engagement. This is all deployed instantly to render the ad message and experience that each individual is most likely to respond to, unlocking additional profit with every transaction.

• Unlocking unique, onsite inventory on the confirmation page: Historically, retailers have overlooked the order confirmation page as a potential source of revenue. By leveraging Rokt to deliver personalized, non-endemic offers to customers after checkout, retailers are able to unlock powerful new onsite inventory and generate incremental spend from brands. The result is a new profit channel that complements their retail media program – all with no upfront cost, heavy lift, or disruption to the customer experience. With Rokt, retailers generate an additional $250,000 in profit for every 1M orders on average.

• Improving the customer experience: As retailers build their brand, it’s essential to drive Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer by providing a relevant, seamless shopping experience. Today’s online shopper is often overwhelmed by the number of competing offers and CTAs that ecommerce retailers display onsite, resulting in a disjointed customer experience and negative impact to purchase rate. Rokt aims to combat this “paradox of choice” by only showing the most relevant content to each customer, creating a seamless customer experience that fosters efficient decision making and a reduction in abandonment rates. 
• Delivering exclusive, non-endemic offers: Retailers can complement their retail media program by leveraging Rokt to deliver premium, non-endemic offers during the transaction moment – specifically in-cart and on the confirmation page. Through advanced machine learning, businesses can unleash their first-party data to deliver native, relevant experiences during and post transaction, effectively scaling the take-rate of non-endemic offers. By tapping into areas like the confirmation page, RMNs extend their reach into a full-funnel experience and unlock additional revenue with no additional upfront costs or heavy lift. This can drive $2.5M in profit per 10M transactions while meeting customer expectations, leading to an increase in customer lifetime value.

• Offsetting costs while building out a long-term strategy: Building out an effective retail media network from scratch, even on a small scale, may take several months³. The more complex of a network, the longer it can take, sometimes spanning several years. Not only does building a retail media network require a significant time investment, it also comes with additional risk and success is not guaranteed. 

To offset the risks, some retailers turn to established third-party technology partners to get their RMN off the ground. Creating a RMN often requires retailers to need new, scalable technology, or even entirely new teams⁴. Whether working with a partner or building a proprietary network, it takes significant human resource and financial capital before your company can generate a meaningful return on investment.

In order to stay ahead, brands can lean on technology like Rokt. Rokt Ecommerce provides retailers with the ability to implement a technology with no lock-in contracts and can get it live in as soon as 2 weeks. This gives retailers the ability to drive incremental revenue even while still in the building stages of their retail media strategy. Additionally, Rokt’s Web SDK is easily installed and configured, with an entire process designed to be completed in a singular sprint to save time.

Retail media networks enable retailers to influence customer purchase behavior and grow revenue by leveraging their first-party data and onsite inventory to target customers with endemic advertiser offers and sponsored products. However, because retail media networks are primarily focused on pre-purchase touchpoints, there is an untapped opportunity to optimize and monetize the customer experience through post-purchase. 

With Rokt, retailers can generate incremental revenue by delivering premium, non-endemic offers at a key moment when customers are most engaged – specifically in-cart and on the order confirmation page – using advanced machine learning to tailor offers to each individual customer. As a result, Rokt serves as a perfect complement to an ecommerce site’s retail media program, enabling a more seamless, personalized experience across the full customer transaction journey.

Learn more about how Rokt complements retail media networks here. 

¹Source: Digiday, “How marketers and retailers are unlocking the true value of retail media,” May 10,2022
²Source: Salesforce, “Fifth Edition State of the Connected Customer,” May 13, 2022
³Source: Epsilon, “How Long Does it Take to Implement a Retail Media Network Strategy?” February 16, 2023
⁴Source: Criteo, “What It Takes to Build a Retail Media Network,” July 28, 2022