Kroger Debuts Private Programmatic Advertising Marketplace
The Kroger Co.’s retail media business, Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) powered by 84.51°, has rolled out a new private programmatic advertising marketplace. The Kroger Private Marketplace enables agencies and brands to target consumers by applying Kroger audience data to programmatic campaigns on their preferred ad-buying platform.
The marketplace aims to make buying easier while giving advertisers unprecedented flexibility, speed and control of their campaigns. For the first time, brands can now reach the most relevant consumers across the internet, using their demand-side platform (DSP) of choice, and then optimize performance against actual retail sales.
Advertisers can match their audiences to campaign objectives using targeting science exclusively available via Kroger Precision Marketing. The platform pre-optimizes audiences to achieve business outcomes. For instance, when aiming for conversions, the targeting science will enable brands to reach relevant households that will deliver the strongest sales impact. These activations have led to household penetration gains from new and lapsed households, with at least three times more sales than the average consumer, according to 84.51° internal data.
The new solution also supports Kroger Precision Marketing’s commitment to safeguarding customer data by employing a deal ID that facilitates appropriate programmatic use while permitting agencies to activate across many platforms.
“We built The Kroger Private Marketplace to be flexible for agencies – while protecting the privacy of our shoppers,” noted Cara Pratt, SVP, Kroger Precision Marketing at 84.51°. “You design the audience, choose the measurement criteria, set the safety standards and activate in your tech stack. We’re setting the bar for the future of programmatic media.”
“Brands are looking for ways to tap first-party retail data and reduce ad waste,” said Helen Lin, chief digital officer at Paris-based advertising and public relations firm Publicis Groupe, the first holding company to take part in the alpha tests for the solution. “The Kroger Private Marketplace uses retail sales data to unlock new optimization levers for programmatic buyers – while still giving them the flexibility to manage the campaign in our existing tech stack.”
Using The Kroger Private Marketplace, advertisers will have self-service access to targeting solutions and audience science to reach relevant households; retail performance metrics such as sales lift, new buyers and household penetration; and various quality controls, including verification and brand safety tagging.
“We’re still in the early days of seeing e-commerce disrupt shopping habits,” added Pratt. “This is an important time for brands to leverage retail insights to influence new shopping behaviors. Kroger’s private marketplace reaches relevant households and empowers teams to optimize campaign performance against actual business outcomes.”
Powered by 84.51° data science and Kroger’s popular loyalty card program, Kroger Precision Marketing connects customers to brands through engagement that inspires online or in-store purchasing. 84.51° is a retail data science, insights and media company helping Kroger, consumer packaged goods companies, agencies, publishers and affiliated partners create more personalized and valuable experiences for shoppers across the path to purchase.
Serving 60 million households annually nationwide through a digital shopping experience and almost 2,800 retail food stores under a variety of banner names, Cincinnati-based Kroger is No. 3 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2021 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.
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