Relevant Sponsored Search from dunnhumby media, Tesco and CitrusAd enables Brands and their agencies to run highly targeted, auction-based campaigns that natively showcase products in the top two search results on Tesco.com across App and Web. Here, Salvatore Pendino – Media Consulting Manager – explains more about the science behind it, as well as the growing opportunity with the UK’s leading online grocery Retailer.
Visibility is everything in digital advertising. Your ad might have the world’s most scintillating creative, but if you can’t get it in front of the right people at the right time, then your investment in creating and delivering has not been maximised.
The challenge that consumer-packaged goods Brands face in increasing product visibility on digital shelves is something that we discuss in more detail in this accompanying article. Here though, I’d like to cover one of dunnhumby media’s latest solutions to this challenge.
Relevant Sponsored Search, developed in partnership between dunnhumby media, Tesco and CitrusAd, is designed to help Brands and agencies convert high-intent shoppers on the Tesco.com website and app. This new addition to the dunnhumby media product portfolio allows advertisers to bid on the top two results that appear when a customer uses the site’s search function.
Every month, Tesco records 62m visits to its website. 20m of these visits are from unique users, and the Retailer has over 3.7m active Customer records on file. In the past year alone, Tesco’s online sales have grown by some 77%1, and it now has the capacity to serve around 1.3m online orders per week2 – an increase of more than 80% from two years ago. And even before this surge, industry experts were already hailing the company as the “biggest online supermarket worldwide”3.
Tesco’s online sales have grown by some 77%1, and it now has the capacity to serve around 1.3m online orders per week2 – an increase of more than 80% from two years ago.
Campaigns delivered through Relevant Sponsored Search use a combination of Tesco’s purchasing and Clubcard data and apply sophisticated data science algorithms to determine the relevance of every product to every Customer. Online and offline purchasing data is used to ensure that we have the best possible picture of a customer across every location in which they shop.
By establishing how relevant certain products are to certain Customers and vice versa, Relevant Sponsored Search is able to prioritise native ad campaigns based on a customer’s likelihood of buying the item being promoted. Sponsored listings are served to Customers who have the greatest potential to add an item to their basket, ensuring that advertisers reduce the amount of money – and time – spent pursuing shoppers who might be less interested in buying their products.
Relevant Sponsored Search is able to prioritise native ad campaigns based on a customer’s likelihood of buying the item being promoted.
The dynamics of Tesco’s online growth now make it possible to reach high-intent shoppers with relevant communications at genuinely unprecedented scale. Moreover, these listings are presented in such a way that makes them inherently trustworthy – surfaced natively and naturally within the context of each page. 44% of all search-related baskets additions come from the top two listing results, and Relevant Sponsored Search enables you to hit those key positions in the most natural way possible.
The opportunity to engage Customers by helping speed up their shop is undoubtedly growing, too. Independent research shows that around half of people say that making shopping easier and more convenient is one of the most important ways in which a brand can interact with them4. Perhaps more importantly, they also like to try new things – particularly now – a third of shoppers tried out a new product brand in 2020, with three quarters intending to continue buying5.
Offering self-service real-time bidding, Relevant Sponsored Search makes it easy for Brands and agencies to drive visibility of SKUs with the right customers at the right time. Pay-for-performance advertising helps you maintain control of ad spend with clear cost-per-click strategies and closed-loop measurement enables you to continuously optimise your returns.
- 1 Tesco Preliminary results 2020/21 – Tesco.com
- 2 We need to solve problems for customers’: Tesco’s CEO on the future of rapid delivery – Marketing Week, 18th June 2021
- 3 Top 10 online supermarkets worldwide – eCommerceDB
- 4 Merkle – Loyalty Barometer Report 2019
- 5 The great consumer shift: Ten charts that show how US shopping behavior is changing – McKinsey & Co., 4th August 2020