Inmar Intelligence Supercharges Retail Media Scale
Inmar Intelligence has made a major move to help retailers, brands and agencies achieve personalization at scale.
The company has formed a new media division named after its 2021 acquisition: Aki Technologies. The new Aki Technologies division integrates all of Inmar and Aki’s media offerings under one organization, led by EVP and President of Inmar's Media division – Aki Technologies Aaron Kechley, who formerly served as interim president of Inmar’s Martech division.
"I think particularly in the current down cycle environment, there's certainly a lot of focus on measurability and ROI from retailers and brands," Kechley said. "And so they are looking to us for that. Depending on whose estimates you look at, consumers are being exposed to somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 ads or brand messages per day. And so the thing that retailers and brands and their agencies are really grappling with, is how do you earn their attention?"
Inmar's new division has an answer for that: a supersized suite of integrated media products, including:
● Social Unbound - Proprietary targeting within social media’s walled gardens enabled by Aki's predictive models for advertising receptivity and Inmar's verified transaction data. Social Unbound also features original creator content in receptive environments beyond social media to amplify the content’s reach and impact.
● Retail Media powered by Aki Moments - Moments targeting enhances retailers’ transaction data with contextual signals to achieve greater scale and acquire new customers across off-platform channels. Now, moments and personalization can also enhance retailers’ owned inventory across their website, app, emails and more to provide more relevant onsite experiences for their shoppers.
● CTV Attribution - Inmar-enhanced sales lift attribution for Aki's CTV advertising campaigns. This follows Aki’s 2022 release of CTV ONE, which enables CTV advertisers to run campaigns with the promise of "frequency without fatigue" in order to achieve strong campaign performance while combating CTV viewers’ top issue–repetitive ads.
"When you look at our overall portfolio now, we have four elements of attention that we believe help marketers break through," Kechley said in an exclusive interview. "The four elements are: Moments AI, which is about identifying the right moment to reach a consumer with a particular message. The second element is personalization, or making the message as relevant as possible with all the information that we can bring to bear. The third element is exclusive data. And this is really the biggest thing that Inmar brings to the table, all the data that we have that retailers and brands entrust us with. And then the fourth element is measuring. So those are our four core pillars of how we are helping retailers and advertisers break through and earn the attention of the shoppers."
Kechley said that when he thinks of growth opportunity for grocery retail media specifically, he sees a lot of upside with offsite media.
"There's a lot more that can be done with offsite media," he said. "We think that there's more action, more growth, and more innovation to be had offsite of the retailer website where you have new customers to be found, and you may not be able to identify them. But with techniques and technology, like what we have, we can bring in new customers that you didn't know before."
Inmar has acquired several companies in the last 10 years, assembling the assets that now form its unified, compelling and comprehensive media and data offering. Past acquisitions include Youtech, OwnerIQ and Collective Bias, with Aki as the latest in 2021.
“We can’t imagine a better way to help our customers rise above this challenging economic climate than to arm them with new products that leverage the best of Inmar and Aki to bolster their competitive edge,” said CEO of Inmar Intelligence Spencer Baird.
Aki’s longstanding credibility within the advertising industry drove the company’s decision to validate and scale its brand equity across Inmar’s greater media division. The division now offers clients triple the resources compared to legacy Aki, with a combined workforce of nearly 500 people.
“PepsiCo has been leveraging Inmar’s social solution for several years and we’ve seen incredible results,” said Drew Ingram, Director of Portfolio Media Strategy at PepsiCo. “We’ve also utilized Aki’s moments-based targeting and personalization solution across our portfolio of brands. I’m excited to see how our partnership grows now that these complementary solutions have joined forces.”
Since Inmar acquired Aki, both companies have collectively received 16 industry awards from Digiday, Marcom, Stevies, Modern Retail, OMMA and others. Together, Inmar and Aki will look to accelerate their industry impact with additional award-winning, high-performing campaigns that drive results and revenue for brands and retailers.