Whenever you need a 3 pound bucket of pretzels and Four gallons of mayonnaise. Or, perhaps more famously, those $1.50 hot dog combos. But now those purchases will help retailers target you with ads, according to a report morning brew Thursday.
Costco plans to leverage customers’ purchasing history into retail media, selling ads to brands in hopes of getting you to buy more of the things you like. Costco’s loyalty program, in which shoppers are required to have a loyalty card tied to all purchases, is expected to make those purchases easier to track, ensuring, for example, that diaper ads appear in front of parents with young children.
“Not only will we help you reach Costco members, we’ll help you reach the right members in the right environment based on past behavior,” Mark Williamson, assistant vice president of retail media at Costco, told Morning Brew.
Costco, the third largest retailer in the United States, has actually fallen behind in selling advertising based on customer data. Morning Brew notes that big-box stores like Walmart, Target, Kroger, and Best Buy have been doing this for years. But Williamson was interviewed at a conference in Las Vegas back in april Regarding Costco’s plans, he joked about having a “100th first mover advantage” because they entered retail media sales too late.
“One of our key tasks is to make sure we avoid the pitfalls and some of the roadblocks and maybe even the self-inflicted wounds of previous iterations of retail media,” Williamson said. “Thankfully, the space has matured and retailers have matured. , the media buying audience has also matured, the pipeline itself and the technology have matured, so now is really a good time to start fresh in the retail media space.
Costco has 130 million members worldwide, and Williamson acknowledged that consumer tastes are fickle.
“Customer behavior is changing dramatically, and we need to be able to adapt quickly,” Williamson said. “So whatever we assemble, we want to make sure that we can grow with the market and we can grow with our members. We want our technology suppliers to do the same – that they’re evolving in their areas, but also It also provides us with the flexibility to grow.
That being said, Williamson is also very excited about the advances in ad tracking that have been made over the past decade, allowing retailers and advertisers to drill down and find people in a very granular way. Williamson said it’s great that technology makes everything traceable, addressable, measurable and accountable.
“We don’t have any of these tools [15 years ago], but we envision it happening one day,” Williamson said. “So it’s exciting to be in an environment where technology can meet the actual behavior of consumers and the needs of retailers.”
According to Morning Brew, Target’s retail media sales contribute $1.5 billion in “value” to the company, so it makes sense. There’s a lot of money to be made using customer data to sell more products.
