With more and more retailers investing in their eCommerce solutions, the rise of retail media continues to accelerate. In January 2021, Pacvue announced support for sponsored product ads on Target.com and the Target app, expanding upon our best-in-class advertising and intelligence solution for Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart.
As of March 2021, Pacvue now supports sponsored product advertising on Ulta Beauty, Shipt, FreshDirect, Meijer, CVS, Staples, and Macy’s. No matter where customers are shopping, brands can use Pacvue’s campaign management, precise automation, competitive intelligence, and flexible reporting solutions to reach their audience and grow sales.
Ulta Beauty
Ulta Beauty is one of the largest chains of beauty stores in the United States, selling cosmetics, makeup, skincare, and other personal care items. Despite the impact of the pandemic on the beauty category, Ulta saw strong growth of its eCommerce business throughout 2020, driven in part by a surge in curbside and in-store pickup options, as well as growth of loyalty program customers shopping online, according to Digital Commerce 360.
Sponsored product ads appear on search, browse, and product detail pages across desktop, mobile, and app. Search placements tend to have the highest ROAS on Ulta, but they also tend to have the highest CPCs, at an average $1.10, versus $0.76 for browse. Ulta will default to browse pages for common terms, such as “mascara” or “foundation,” but niche products will need to bid more competitively to show up in search placements.
Shipt
Similar to Instacart, Shipt is a same-day grocery delivery service. Customers can shop from nearly a hundred different retailers on Shipt, including H-E-B, Kroger, Sur La Table, Target, and Costco. On average, 78% of customers are new or lapsed customers for a given retailer, meaning you can potentially reach a wide set of new consumers with advertising.
About 75% of sponsored ad spend is driven by search placements on Shipt, and search also has the highest ROAS at about 300%, compared to 200% for browse and PDP placements. Personal care, household supplies, and beverages tend to be the most competitive categories.
FreshDirect
FreshDirect is another grocery delivery service. However, FreshDirect differs from Instacart and Shipt in that it’s a regional service focused on the East Coast of the United States, and customers don’t need to select a specific retailer to shop from when creating an order. Instead, FreshDirect partners directly with suppliers and local stores to fulfill orders.
As such, FreshDirect tends to be less competitive for sponsored product ads, and we see high ROAS. Some categories do see more competition, such as beverages, so brands can expect to see a higher average CPC.
Meijer
Meijer is a supermarket chain in the Midwest of the United States and sells groceries, electronics, home goods, and more. Though known for its big-box stores, Meijer has also expanded its micro-fulfillment model and opened up a series of smaller, urban stores for faster delivery.
The majority of sponsored product ad spend tends to occur on browse placements on the Meijer site, with ads appearing on the third row of the page. As such, it’s important to QA your product content and placements on Meijer and ensure products appear on the most appropriate browse node.
CVS
CVS is one of the largest convenience store and pharmacy chains across the United States. Not surprisingly, health and medicine tends to be the most competitive category on CVS. Sponsored products on PDP pages have an average ROAS of 450%, higher than the240% ROAS for search and 200% ROAS for browse placements.
Staples
Staples is an office supplies store that sells computers, printers, accessories, consumer electronics, and other supplies. Sponsored products appear on search, browse, and product detail pages.
Macy’s
Macy’s is a department store chain with locations nationwide. Beyond apparel, Macy’s also sells beauty products and home goods. Sponsored products have high visibility, appearing in the second row of search and browse pages across desktop, mobile, and app. Sponsored products also appear in carousels on PDP pages, the homepage, and during checkout.
Future Retailers
Pacvue will continue to expand to additional retailers throughout 2021, and we will be announcing new partnerships with even more marketplaces in the months ahead.
Staying on top of so many retail channels can be a headache, let alone the complexity of trying to compare apples-to-apples in your reporting. Pacvue is the only technology to offer a unified dashboard for cross-retailer media performance and insights. With Unified Retail Media, advertisers can compare retailers side-by-side and aggregated for common metrics such as spend, ROAS, CPC, CTR and more. Advertisers can also drill down into campaign-level performance across retailers, all in one place, to uncover the most efficient channels for specific product lines, bidding strategies, and holistic performance trends.
