Walgreens Advertising Group (WAG) is making good use of one of its most valuable assets: a treasure trove of first-party data from the broader organization. As the official retail media network for the drugstore chain, WAG makes all decisions, and designs its core offerings, based on customer insights.
“Everything we do really starts with insights,” explained Katie Vogt, Senior Director of Client Success at WAG during a session at the Retail Innovation Conference & Expo this past June. “When we think about media strategy, audience, channel or even measurement plan, it all starts with those consumer insights.”
Being part of a larger enterprise provides a robust view of customer needs, behaviors and expectations, and it also has provided WAG with a lot of insight into past marketing tests, campaigns, successes and even failures. “We have the connection to an ecosystem of omnichannel media platforms — on our site, off our site and in our stores,” Vogt said. “So you’re really taking the power of that data and the ability to reach a very specific customer — and then you’re finding them wherever they’re shopping.
It was this organization-wide alignment and learning that helped WAG unlock a new opportunity: Connected TV (CTV) advertising and shoppable TV. “When Walgreens Enterprise is testing and learning with something like shoppable TV, we then know we can learn from them and bring those same capabilities to our brand partners and all the advertisers we work with,” Vogt added.
Uncovering Opportunity Through TV Screens
In fact, retail media and CTV have a lot of organic synergy, largely driven by consumers’ attachment — even dependence — on their smartphones, argued Caitlin McKnight, Head of Industry – Retail at Roku. “These two [types of devices] are really joining forces now…it’s all about reaching the precise consumer at the right time when they’re in the shopper journey.”
The key to delivering these precise, highly orchestrated media moments hinges on having first-party data that RMNs can target against. “The more exact the data is…the more it’s going to benefit and push everyone down that purchase funnel,” McKnight noted.
Roku has helped many brands and retailers bring their shoppable TV aspirations to life. With a reach of approximately 200 million people each month, Roku is one of the larger TV platforms in the market and has a lot of robust data about how consumers engage with ads and shop through their TVs.
“We’re able to…understand user behaviors, especially as we’re teaching them to shop off their TV,” McKnight explained.” Although it’s still early days for Shoppable TV, the Roku team has garnered a few lessons and best practices:
- 30-second ads tend to perform best;
- Calls to action should be compelling and, if appropriate, break the fourth wall and explain to customers in a simple way what the ad is and what they can do next; and
- Consumers should be able to shop, learn more or connect with the brand via a TV remote, not QR codes.
A Prime Time for Shoppable TV Adoption
The mass adoption of streaming services and digital rentals has undoubtedly made consumers more comfortable making purchases via TV platforms. Roku is partnering with retailers like Walgreens to expand applications and acquire new learnings to help advertisers succeed.
For example, Walgreens ran a winter holiday ad featuring a special one-hour delivery promotion. Using their Roku remote, consumers could engage with the “OK to Text” function to enter their phone numbers and receive a text containing more details about the promotion and a link to shop.
“We were really excited about this campaign and it exceeded benchmarks with click-through rate,” Vogt shared. “We learned that ‘OK to Text’ was really engaging customers, driving them to click and also getting them to spend more time with the ad, because they actually were taking action right there as the ad was running.”
The WAG team was able to take the learnings from this and other campaigns run by the Walgreens Enterprise team to bring some of the core capabilities of shoppable CTV ads — along with the retailer’s rich data set of 120 million MyWalgreens loyalty program members — to advertising partners. Through a partnership with The Trade Desk, WAG advertising partners can use either custom audiences or more “off-the-shelf” audiences, so they can target Walgreens shoppers as they plan their CTV buys, including through Roku.
“The beauty of reaching a specific Walgreens shopper is that [brands can] tie back the measurement and understand whether the shoppable CTV ad actually drove those customers to go into a store or go online to make a purchase,” Vogt explained. “We’ve been really excited about the results, and how we’ve been able to bring that to our brands and make it so their CTV ads can work harder and be more effective through the use of first-party data.”
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