Leveraging Retail Intelligence for Advanced Audience Targeting

Paul Sonneveld
I am your host, Paul Sonneveld and today we'll focus on how digital media and Amazon agencies can use insights to create a more personalized campaigns that boost engagement and drive better ROI. Joining me today is Rupert Staines. So Rupert is the CEO of Vector Retail Media, and his company uses advertising technology and AI to create highly tailored marketing campaigns and optimized operations, really helping brands increase sales with a really seamless brand-aligned experience. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. Rupert has extensive experience building international teams and driving growth in digital tech and data businesses. He's skilled in retail media, digital strategy, data management and leadership, and actually has a really strong track record in helping startups and scale-ups thrive across Europe. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Rupert.

Rupert Staines
Thank you. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for inviting me. And yeah, I hope I can be of help and bring some decent insight.

Paul Sonneveld
Now, I'm very excited about this particular topic, because this is a topic that gets, at least terminology gets bandied around a lot. And I profess I'm probably one of those people that doesn't have a complete grasp on this topic. So I really look forward to exploring that with you through the course of today. 

Okay, let's get into it. Now, Rupert, I know you and I have, uh, as we're prepping for this, we talk about retail data-driven advertising. But I would just want to start with this. Why do you believe that retail data maybe we should define that first, is really key to more precise audience targeting and improved ad performance. So two-part question, actually. Let's talk about what is retail data in the context of advertising, and then why do you believe it's really key to precise audience targeting?

Rupert Staines
Yeah, so retail data, I mean, we're talking about shopper behavior essentially. And if you kind of go back as long as I've been in digital, the digital advertising sort of world has been dominated really by first Google with their search data. So understanding or deciphering people's intent from their search behavior and which has been obviously very successful for them and for many others. 

And then we sort of moved in this sort of 2014 era, we moved into some social data with meta and everything that they could kind of bring to that same path. And really retail data, whilst it's been around for a long time, it hasn't really manifested itself well in the digital world because there hasn't been the accessibility, in the way that Amazon can now bring that, and that's really where Amazon, I think, are the next big player with respect to that digital advertising capability. Because retail data gives you real shopper behaviour in terms of what people are viewing and buying, and all the purchase intent and buying signals that happen around that. 

So it's exciting because we see certainly in these early days, we're seeing far superior performance based on people's actual buying behaviour and shopping behaviour. And that's given us more, I think, more encouragement to see that really Amazon data and the sheer scale of their data and the first-party nature of their data is going to have a massive impact on digital advertising targeting as a whole.

Paul Sonneveld
So you mentioned first party data there. I have a follow up question here, but in terms of when we're bending the term around first party data, that is the data that Amazon collects about shoppers in terms of how they're engaging with the platform. What are they buying? What are they looking at? What categories they're most interested in? Have I got, you know, I'm just sort of regurgitating what I think is in my head, just wanted to sanity check that, have I got that correct or would you define first party data in a different way?

Rupert Staines
No, you're probably right, I mean at the end of the day, first party data as most people would understand it is, you know, data that relates to an individual and the information that that individual or the data footprint that that individual is leaving around the web as they travel around shopping and searching for content and information. 

So in the world of Amazon, of course, you've got almost 400 million shoppers globally. Obviously, some markets much bigger than others, like the US, obviously, UK, Germany, and Japan. They're the biggest. But of course, if you shop on Amazon, and I would guess that most people on this call have shopped on Amazon, um you know you are typically if you're buying you're signing up you're giving away your information the same way as you give up your information if you're using you know Facebook or you're you know or you're searching and using Google and you're using Gmail you're giving up that first party information about yourself so your name your address your email your phone number but then with buying data

Paul Sonneveld
I think you were talking about data that obviously, not so much privacy data, but data that Amazon collects about your shopping behavior. That's where we lost you.

Rupert Staines
Yeah, that's right. When you shop on Amazon, you are leaving that digital footprint around all those all those actions that you're taking when you're within the Amazon environment be that in the mobile environment on their app or on desktop and of course that is now much broader because you know people who sign up for Prime for example you know you're also giving away information on you know what your what your preferred programming is that you watch, or the music that you're listening to, or the podcast that you're listening to. So there's a huge amount of information and data that is now available through the Amazon ecosystem, for want of a better term. And it's all that data that's now available and accessible to advertisers who want to take advantage of that.

Paul Sonneveld
So from an agency perspective, like yourselves, are there any ethical considerations around privacy, particularly in Europe, where the bar is pretty high? How do you navigate that landscape? Or actually, is it less of a concern?

Rupert Staines
I think privacy is a concern, full stop. And, you know, having been involved in this for many years, I've seen every part of that sort of ethical journey from the very early days when it was completely, you know, the Wild West, all the way through to today, when obviously there's a huge amount of regulation around it. 

I think the beauty of the Amazon environment is they've almost, they come from an enviable position of having been able to build up a first party data set from day one. And in terms of how you use that in the context of advertising and marketing, it is already anonymized. It is already completely sort of under lock and key. So there is no way to sort of reverse engineer or bring out any information that would give rise to privacy concerns. So not only is it already properly locked up on the ethical scale, we really don't have any concerns with it because you're not using cookies.

Paul Sonneveld
Thanks Rupert. So there's a few people having technical difficulties with the stream and I'm just giving them the YouTube link to do that. Let's move on to the practical side of this. How do you, so from a vector retail media point of view, I mean, you guys do this day in, day out. How do you use that retail data in practical ways to really help build, buy and optimize digital advertising campaigns? You know, can you give us a flavor of how you use that first party retail data?

Rupert Staines
Sure. In our world of, let's call it, Amazon specialists, it's typically divided between people who have the marketplace skills to help brands build their businesses on Amazon. But then on the advertising side, that's almost a separate specialist where you're using Amazon's advertising technology stack. And that is now, that has evolved hugely over the last couple of years. To the point where you can really use that ad tech in the same way as you can use Google 360 or you can use Meta. 

So we can build data and build audiences in such a way that we can connect advertisers using whatever marketing advertising strategy they have. We can use those audiences and that data to kind of power the marketing and the targeting. We do it in a different way, we like to think, because I think partly because of our marketplace and specialist background. We have a huge amount of sort of retail insight and we understand how it is that consumers are engaging across this Amazon shop. 

And that gives us the ability to drill a lot deeper into the Amazon data and then to build cohorts of audience around that, which Amazon, by their own admittance, don't really do because they're very siloed as an organization, as many large organizations are. They have their ads group, And they have their retail group. The two never talk to each other. So we're able to kind of bring that retail insight together and in combination with all the advertising insights as well. And that then enables us to drive far superior performance.

Paul Sonneveld
Very interesting. There's usually this, the opportunity, right, where there is different silos in Amazon and trying to leverage that to build some new insights. What about the audience modeling side of things? I mean, how do you leverage the audience modeling to ensure you're reaching the right customers at the right time on the right platforms? How do you think through that? 

Rupert Staines
Yeah, so the data set that Amazon has is complex in nature, one, because of its scale, two, because of the sheer detail. So anybody here who works on Amazon, in Amazon, you know, will understand there are thousands of categories of shopper behaviour. And those categories can be drilled into with regard to, is it products you're looking at? Is it brands you're looking at? Is it stores you're looking at? And how do you therefore combine all this sort of intricate shopping behavior into sort of an audience type that you know is going to be served better when it comes to combining with an advertiser-friendly sort of media-ready data. And it's that proprietary sort of methodology that we have that enables us to then deploy that data, that audience programmatically across all the sort of media availability. 

So you really have to look at it in two parts. One is the data. What are we doing to build our audience? that makes it highly effective, the propensity for people to be shown an advert when they are absolutely in the right mind and the right place to respond positively to that. That's a skill in itself. But then on the other side, you've got the media. And obviously, through Amazon's DSP, the accessibility to media now is extremely broad. So it's not just Amazon. I think people get confused and they go, well, it's just Amazon Media. Well, it's not. Obviously, you've got the retail side, so the app and the website. But you've also got their prime video stable now, which is not just prime video, but you've got freebie and other connected TV media that you can buy. 

But they've also got their whole audio ads. So Alexa and Amazon Music is also a huge, huge part, which is only going to grow. And then most importantly, They have 35 at the last count integrations to what we call open web exchanges of media. So all the supply side of premium websites that is made available as well. So you've really got the full media landscape and it's about applying then the right audience to that to drive the best business outcomes.

Paul Sonneveld
It's really interesting to hear about all these different channels, because when I'm thinking DSP, for some reason, my mind always thinks display advertising, or maybe my brain is stretching into Prime TV a little bit. But what do you feel is the most neglected, underutilized, or even ignored channel that's out there that you feel completely undervalued in terms of the results that you're seeing?

Rupert Staines
It's a very good question. I think all those channels are available via the Amazon DSP. And I think they're all quite undervalued and neglected today because it's new, because it's relatively nascent in terms of what people's understanding is. I think there's still, I think, a habit in the market to think of Amazon as just a shop, and therefore people don't really think beyond the shop. 

But when you look under the hood and you understand the sheer scale of the media availability, And then really, I would argue that today, Prime Video is very new, only really launched in Europe in the last nine months. That is still very undervalued, but that is beginning to come to market and seriously challenge the sort of legacy players out there. So that's very exciting. I think audio ads, as a means of getting the right message in front of the right consumer, I think is a huge opportunity. 

And I think the way in which people use display advertising and online video to advertise to the wider market across the open web in terms of all the sort of premium websites that exist out there. I think people haven't really grasped that opportunity because it looks and feels very similar to how you would use a Google or Meta. And what we're saying to people is you need to consider Amazon in that mix because the same opportunity exists in terms of media, but a better opportunity exists in terms of the data that we're using to drive best performance. And that performance, isn't just about the bottom of the funnel. It's also as much about the sort of consideration, the awareness for building brands. So that's really exciting. 

The other side to that is, I think a lot of people who deal with Amazon think of what they like to call endemic brands. So, you know, brands who are already using Amazon as a sales channel. And that is, of course, an area that is already hugely successful. And we're using our sort of VIP technology for that. But I think a really big opportunity coming down the pipe is the non-endemic advertising landscape. So, you know, we often use the example of, you know, pet owners. Amazon has pretty much all the information you could ever want about pet owners, what they're buying across that sort of enormous breadth of category. 

But it's not just about the stuff people are buying. It's also the fact that they are pet owners. Therefore, that is as a data set. As interesting, if not more interesting, for all the services around pets. So pet insurance, as an example, that's what we call non-endemic. And I think that advertising opportunity is huge.

Paul Sonneveld
So the million dollar question for me now is, because it sounds very promising, but the game here for me is, how do they all work together? to achieve an objective. When you think about the cross channel strategy, how do you use the right combination and how do you even determine what the right combination is to really maximize your reach and engagement for brands? I mean, to some extent, there's probably no answer to that question because it really depends on what you're trying to achieve and the product and the category and all of that. But how do you think through that conceptually?

Rupert Staines
Well, I think you have to have a marketing head for that. You need to be well versed in the kind of marketing funnel. You need to understand clearly the objectives of brand in question and what it is they're trying to drive. Is it simply brand awareness or is it actual customers in market right now? 

Now, obviously, at whatever stage of that funnel you're at, you can use the Amazon data to determine the right type of audience, because not everybody on Amazon is buying right now. They're searching. they're gaining information, they're trying to kind of make a purchasing decision, which in certain categories can be days, or it can be weeks, or it can be months ahead. And of course, the ability is there to understand where people are within that sort of purchasing and sort of decision making funnel. 

The other side to that is that Amazon have the Amazon Marketing Cloud, which you know, came to market with sort of bells and whistles last year. It's gone. It's got a little quiet since because I think a lot of people don't fully understand it. But it is essentially a data clean room where you can combine the advertiser data with Amazon buying signals. And that helps to understand and determine what that customer journey is. So the insight you get from that, and the analysis that gives you to determine what is the best customer journey, and where are they on that journey? And therefore, at what point can you prime them with an ad? 

Paul Sonneveld
Are there journeys that are becoming increasingly common as you are looking at AMC? Are you seeing trends and patterns that seem to be sort of winning formulas at all?

Rupert Staines
I think it's a bit early to say exactly what those are. I think we're more that phase of analysis and determining by brand, because it's very much on a case by case, what are those events that a consumer is, what are those events along the purchasing journey that would imply that they are more in market for your products over the next one? 

So I think it's about It's about test and learn a lot of this from a sort of AMC and data perspective. But I think we're going to quite quickly get to a point where the idea of understanding that multi-touch attribution, as marketers would call it, where that's landing and how effective the mix of Amazon purchasing data and the advertiser's own customer data, where that's going to land. But I'd love to be able to kind of, I'll come back on another podcast and tell you all about the experience of that in the next six months, I'd say.

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, I think there's probably, we can do a session alone on actually how to use AMC and how to derive useful insights for decision making. 

Rupert Staines
For sure.

Paul Sonneveld
That's a whole other episode in itself. I'd love to move on maybe to some case studies and practical takeaways, because I really appreciate your painting a really clear and robust picture of how the various elements, what elements are available, the channels, how it all works together, how you think about using that retail data to build audiences and cohorts. 

But I'd love to get to some specifics, things that maybe kind of inspire us, the things that sort of make some light bulb moments occur in our brains. Can you share maybe some examples, even if it's anonymized, of course, of how have you been working with brands to really improve their campaign outcomes through some of the frameworks we've been discussing?

Rupert Staines
Yeah, sure. I think, I mean, it has to be anonymized, obviously. I think the first thing I'd say is the most encouraging and the most, in fact, dramatic, almost surprising outcome for us for three or four of our endemic brands right now is that the use of the DSP and the use of our VIP audiences, as described, is actually providing a better ROAS than the actual PPC ads. Now that's, I must confess, I never expected that.

Paul Sonneveld
You were just talking to us about how the ROAS on your DSP campaigns were substantially higher than you expected.

Rupert Staines
Yeah, well, I'm not going to say substantially higher, but they were better than PPC. And I think the expectation for most people is that your PPC ads are always going to kind of perform better because the person's in the act of purchasing, they're clicking on that sponsored ad and then you're getting a pretty good conversion. 

But we're finding that the Across our different types of VIP audiences, we're getting really percentages anywhere between 80 and 200% increase on anything from metrics such as your click-through rate, or your new-to-brand increase, or the decrease in the cost per purchase, an increase in your conversion rate, a big increase in your detailed page views. So everything's pointing to better performance. Now that's on the endemic front. 

On the non-endemic, I think we're particularly excited about the brand building opportunities that now exist with this data on different channels. So in Prime Video, and some of the online video that we're running, we're seeing really good CPAs, according to whatever the metric is that the agency or brand is after. So I think that's you know, that's evidence in itself that this is working very well. I think where we want to get to is a place where we can properly go public with some of the case studies to show just the effectiveness increases with this type of data.

Paul Sonneveld
At risk of asking for a very, very obvious answer here, why do you think you are going back to the endemic brands and you're getting a better result than the sponsored products campaigns. 

Rupert Staines
Yeah. 

Paul Sonneveld
Why do you think that is?

Rupert Staines
I think there's two things on this one. You have to be very mindful of I guess the cannibalization of your efforts across all your different channels. So when we're running endemic activity, we're obviously running the PPC side as well. And we are just finding that the format usage, the creative usage that is available, we can be more creative with the message than you can be with typical sponsored product ads. 

So I think a lot of it is in the creative and the message delivery, which you don't really get with sponsored ads. Sponsored ads is pretty direct. It's like Google Ads. It is what it is, and you go with it. But I think with the display side, with the DSP, you've got more flexibility around message and creative. And I think that is having a better, more positive impact on the consumer. So that's good, and I think that's going to develop a lot over the future. 

I think the other side is also just cost. Now, I'm sure everybody on this call who's in the PPC game will appreciate, COVID, Amazon went nuts. Post COVID, it's obviously come off the boil, but it's still growing at a decent rate. The challenge, unfortunately, is that so many more brands are now using the Amazon channel, that the CPC rates have risen, inflated significantly. So I think there's got to be careful management of your bidding strategy. And that, on the PPC side, I think has played into the hands on the DSP side. So I think some of the results are based on price.

Paul Sonneveld
Thank you for sharing those insights. Maybe to wrap up, practical advice for others, especially, you know, I know there's a lot of agencies out there that traditionally do the PPC game, maybe full service Amazon agencies, What practical advice would you give to those agencies as they're looking to build out capabilities, apply these strategies to their own clients? I mean, I'm sure there's lots of mistakes to make, right? So maybe sometimes I frame this as, what are the kind of the banana skins to watch out for or to step around?

Rupert Staines
Yeah, I think in our experience, having obviously worked on the other side and worked in digital tech platforms over the last 20 years, it's about personnel and it's about tools and tech that you use. I think with Amazon focused agencies, there is a tendency to work in a particular way, which does revolve largely around PPC and understanding the Amazon environment. 

But if you want to get into the sort of better use of DSP, better use of display advertising in the kind of broader context of digital marketing, you need practitioners, you need people who understand programmatic advertising. People who have been around this digital ad scene for a while to really understand all the metrics and all the different tools that need to be used to drive successful display and video campaigns. So it's a lot of its people. 

And I think also it's about having, and this is certainly a banana skin for us in the early days, is having an understanding of how your client, your brand is organizationally set up. And that applies not just to brands, but that also applies to media agencies, the sort of traditional media agencies. No one's really doing this right now. 

So therefore, organizationally, there's a little way to go before the marketers, traditional marketers kind of catch up with what retail media is actually about. Because it's not just about placing ads on retail media, it's about how you use the data that retail can deliver for you. So that organisational piece on the client side is a challenge because there's often not, you're often talking a language to people who don't really understand it and so there's quite a lot of education that needs to be done.

Paul Sonneveld
Sounds like there's a little bit of white space to be had for some time there. I know you're investing heavily in this space. Which actually is a good segue, first of all, to thank you for sharing your expertise. I know you're not just bringing your effective retail media experience here, but your years of experience in this game. I really appreciate that. 

I've really got a much better understanding of all these different channels and how actually why, I mean, the big takeaway for me is why retail data is a much more powerful way to target than, you know, guess where the likes of Google and social media kind of metrics started. It's really the next evolution and gets you much closer to purchase intent and the customer. So very interesting. 

Now, I know you are really deep into this. I know you're doing a lot of work behind the scenes to build out your own technology in this front. But for those listening in today or watching this on demand after, and perhaps they're keen to continue the conversation with you, what is the best way to get in touch with you?

Rupert Staines
Yeah, by all means, email, which is rupertstaines@vectorretail.media. that's probably the easiest way, or via our LinkedIn channel as well, or just link in. It's just as easy. But yeah, look, we're very open to really any conversations across the whole space, because as you say, it's a wide space, and it's a very big market. So we want to do our bit, but we want more people to do the same.

Paul Sonneveld
Excellent. Thank you so much on that note. Until next time, until we do the deep dive on how to use AMC and derive some real insights out of it. Let's put that on the agenda for 2025, perhaps.

Rupert Staines
Good stuff. Look forward to it. Thank you, Paul.

Paul Sonneveld
Take care. All right. All right, everyone. That's a wrap for today's episode of Marketplace Masters. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Now, if you are looking for more insights, please ensure to check out our video on demand library at merchantspring.io for a wealth of video content. 

Of course, if you're looking for analytics, whether it be agency level analytics for Amazon or vendor analytics, feel free to reach out to me. I'd love to show you what Merchantspring is all about. And last but not least, I'm always on the lookout for new topics, new content, things that you'd like me to tackle next. So if there's an interesting idea that you'd like me to explore and perhaps find the right speaker or expert for, please send me a message and I will do the research and recruitment for you. Until next time, take care.