Programmatic change agents

Photo credit: Cara Pratt discusses programmatic media with Amanda Mollet (Spark Foundry) and Amy Lanzi (Publicis Groupe) at Advertising Week New York. “Originally published in the Advertising Week New York Trends Report and is reprinted with permission.”

It's becoming apparent that the intersection between programmatic and retail will shape the future of media. Here, Cara Pratt SVP at Kroger Precision Marketing builds excitement for the future of programmatic media and the new Kroger Private Marketplace with agency partners Amanda Mollet and Amy Lanzi.

"Digital advertising is at an inflection point," says Cara Pratt (pictured), SVP for Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM). "Brands are demanding meaningful results from their media investments. It isn't enough for a media publisher to believe their job is to just sell impressions. Sales results matter."

In this new world, Pratt says retailers have earned a significant role to play. "We have a really important opportunity and frankly, obligation, to lean in and bring a new level of accountability forward to leverage our first party data in meaningful ways," says Pratt.

This mission inspired Kroger's retail media team to build their new private marketplace. The Kroger Private Marketplace allows brands and agencies to directly activate custom-built audiences in the brand's preferred DSP - and then measure performance against retail metrics like attributable sales or ROAS. "We designed this private marketplace to be flexible for agencies - while guarding the data of our shoppers," says Pratt.

"Agencies design the audience, choose the measurement criteria, set the safety standards, and activate in their tech stack."

"The Kroger Private Marketplace is transformative-and together with agency partners - we're shaping the consumer-centric future of programmatic media."

Cara Pratt, SVP, Kroger Precision Marketing

For Amy Lanzi, Commerce Practise Lead at North America Publicis Groupe, the loyalty background KPM brings to agencies is a welcomed innovation.

"This data really allows us to understand consumer buying habits. It allows us to see if we are driving incrementality. That's very different versus other purchase data and we find it invaluable when we're thinking about navigating where consumers are buying as well as all the different modes of their shopping," says Lanzi.

From a programmatic perspective the goal is the flexibility and effectiveness. For Amanda Mollet, SVP for Spark Foundry, one of the biggest differentiators with KPM is the sales data in a demand side platform (DSP).

"Kroger data is coming into the DSP directly; to be able to optimise your programmatic media against an actual sales metric and get something driving lift for your clients business is so compelling."

"It's a game changer," says Mollet.