Dollar General Evolves Retail Media to Tap into Overlooked Market Areas

DGMN allows brands to access hard-to-reach small-town markets

6/7/2022

Dollar General Evolves its Retail Media to Tap into Overlooked Market Areas

Dollar General’s enhanced media network aims to better serve rural communities through unique audience insights and closed loop reporting, adding value to customers and brand partners.

While other retailers aim to capitalize on high-volume efficiency plays typically found in more densely populated markets, Dollar General is focusing on serving often overlooked rural communities via its enhanced retail media network, DGMN.

Initially introduced in 2018, DGMN aims to unlock the next generation of growth for the retailer’s advertising partners by exceeding benchmarks, industry standards and more. DGMN provides access to real-time data with brands to help them serve Dollar General’s unique customer base across more than 18,000 stores in 47 states, delivering more than 2 billion transactions annually. Approximately 75% of Dollar General stores currently serve markets of 20,000 or fewer people.

“The next iteration of Dollar General’s retail media network, DGMN, is a significant evolution as we look to better serve our markets and customers, particularly those in rural areas, with the brands and products they desire,” said Charlene Charles, head of DG Media Network Operations. “Typically, digital platforms focus their delivery on high-volume efficiency plays, which naturally skew to more densely populated markets for optimization. DG’s first-party data addresses this gap, allowing brands to tap into our unduplicated, extensive and accelerating reach.”

With an ability to reach more than 90% of active customers through paid media, DGMN enables advertisers to both digitally and physically build awareness and drive purchase consideration.

“At Dollar General, we know our customers well, and we continue to identify ways in which we can best service our communities – not just through our brick-and-mortar stores, but also digitally,” added Charles. “DGMN is providing digital solutions specifically tailored to our customers with a more convenient, frictionless and personalized shopping experience.”

For example, Dollar General’s more than 4 million monthly active app users are consistently engaging with current in-app platforms to discover DG digital coupons, explore DG’s weekly ad, pre-shop and engage in e-commerce. This continued engagement plays a critical role in DGMN’s expanding audience-first media design.

The proprietary audience-centric solution is powered by DGMN's strategic partners, which include the largest independent demand-side platform, The Trade Desk; Live Ramp for data collaboration, including advanced data clean-room capabilities; Google Ad Manager for on-site and in-app inventory management; and Goodway Group for expertise in digital media strategy, planning and buying. With the help of these partnerships, DGMN delivers closed-loop 1:1 measurement, insights, and reporting that identifies both attribution and incrementality.

Dollar General’s evolved media network now includes 21 new advertising partners, representing brands such as Unilever (which has been working with Dollar General’s media network since 2018), General Mills, Hershey’s and Colgate-Palmolive.

Meanwhile, Dollar General saw a 4.2% jump in net sales to reach $8.8 billion during its first fiscal quarter. Same-store sales were down 0.1%, and net income fell 18.5% in that same period. Despite lower net income and slightly lower same-store sales, the company is optimistic in its strategy going forward and has upgraded its outlook for the rest of the year.

Goodlettsville, Tenn.-based Dollar General is No. 15 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. Dollar General is also PG’s 2021 Retailer of the Year.