Christine Foster, Senior Vice President of Kroger Precision Marketing Powered by 84.51°, offers her insights on redefining what “full-funnel impact” really means in retail media.
Why is it important to connect upper-funnel brand awareness efforts with lower-funnel sales activation?
It is important because consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands are dealing with complex challenges that can defy the sales funnel. They’re trying to keep loyal shoppers, introduce new flavors without cannibalizing from their existing line, change pack sizes, or drive trials of line extension in a different store aisle. To navigate this complexity, they need to identify the business opportunities in different household segments and then reach them with the right message at the right moment across different media. That’s why we unified our consumer insights, retail media and loyalty marketing groups into one team at Kroger Precision Marketing. We’re helping brands to work with one source of retail data: from business analysis to campaign activation to shopper retention.
What metrics would you use to measure full-funnel impact in retail media?
At the highest level, most brands define growth through household penetration. At the lower level, that can often come to life as incremental sales or incremental return on investment (iROAS – not ROAS). But that doesn’t mean you use one singular metric for every part of your campaign. Let every part of your media plan do what it does best.
How do you evaluate whether a retail media campaign drives both brand lift and conversion?
You can’t expect every touchpoint to do everything. But by using retail data, your media touchpoints can work together. For example, you can use retail data to reach only lapsed brand buyers on CTV or social media and then you can reach those same households with a trial promotion. Each touchpoint works from the same retail data to drive new households, but the conversion is ultimately at retail.
What challenges do brands face when trying to attribute sales across the full funnel in retail environments?
The key with attribution is to isolate the true impact of your media. Retailers need to factor in organic sales when creating test and control groups. For example, we use a propensity score, which accounts for a household’s predisposition to purchase a brand or category. Our test and control groups have the same predisposition, meaning we don’t claim attribution for the organic sales that a brand would have without the advertising. When we show incremental sales or household lift, we know we are only taking credit for the true media impact.
