Target's customer ad network takes on Amazon

Industry Contributor 9 May 2019 -

Target's customer ad network takes on Amazon

By Paul McIntyre - Executive Editor

Market Voice 3 min read

Retail media: Key lessons to avoid repeating programmatic ‘gold rush’ mistakes, hollowing out brand budgets

By Rory Heffernan - Chief Executive Officer, Atomic 212º | Partner Content

Retail media’s rise comes as marketers are being told to do even more with even less, says Atomic 212º Chief Executive Officer, Rory Heffernan, and puts brand budgets under further pressure.

Market Voice 4 min read

Airports are back bigger and better: why they are the next frontier for incredibly human brand connection

By Jemma Enright - General Manager, Airport, JCDecaux ANZ | Partner Content

In the next 5 years, brands will be reaching 85m passengers a year in the transformed terminals of Sydney, Adelaide, and Perth airports. That’s a massive opportunity to engage an emotionally charged audience in a context of curiosity and discovery, says JCDecaux’s Jemma Enright.

Market Voice 3 min read

The best relationships are personal – regional strategies should be too

By Phil Leyshon - Director of Digital, ACM | Partner Content

Mi3 sat down with ACM Director of Digital Phil Leyshon to discuss how first party data and enriched targeting is bringing brands closer to the regions – and notching upwards of 30 per cent growth.

Tags: target, roundel, advertising, media, google, facebook, amazon, data, coke, disney, dyson, mastercard, mondelez, unilever

Retailer Target has rebranded its ad business and is more aggressively pushing media and creative services backed by shopper data to brands – even those that do not sell products in its stores (AdWeek).

Key points:

Target Media Network rebranded to Roundel
Touting data-backed media and creative across 150 ‘brand safe’ sites, including Pinterest, PopSugar and NBC Universal

Push comes as Walmart and Amazon ad businesses ramp up
Roundel works with 1,000 brands, including Coke, Disney, Dyson, Mastercard, Mondelez and Unilever
Also works with agencies, customising campaigns based on data
Uses shopper data to prove sales uplift
“It’s about display, it’s about social, it’s about video, it’s going to be about linear TV, too. We want people to understand, in this context, the breadth and the scope of what this business is about.” - Kristi Argyilan, Roundel president

First party sales data is something Google and Facebook – and ad agencies - do not have. Target does. It also has strong relationships with brands whose products it sells. Now it is wooing others, acting as a full service agency with a media network as well as its own platform. Target can also physically shift the goods – same day if required - after acquiring Shipt for $550m in 201 7. Earlier this year it started bringing third party sellers onto target.com.

Whether it can catch Amazon is another matter. But retailers are capitalising on the fact that they have the data every brand wants, and every agency needs to stay relevant. And as Amazon continues to put the bite on its competitors, retailers are biting back. But the lunches they are most likely to eat are those of agencies, publishers and big ad platforms without purchase data.