Confidence in retail media grows with Drizly ad network launch

Another week, another retail ad network launches – this time it’s the turn of Uber-owned Drizly, an alcohol delivery service that will expand its ad network beyond its current display offer to a wide suite of solutions.

The news

Drizly, which adds a delivery layer to local retailers, grew rapidly wildly amid a COVID-era explosion in demand. Now, with Drizly Ads, the company purports to be able to reach one of the US’s largest alcohol-drinking audiences “along every stage of their buying journey”. It touts that the marketplace, which serves around 5,000 retailers across 35 states, can run regulation-friendly advertising across the full funnel.

Behind the trend

Retail media is a huge growth market that GroupM forecasts expect to rise by 15% to reach a total $101bn in spend by the end of this year.

There are several reasons: from Apple’s Tracking Transparency making social media advertising measurement much harder, to the imperative for brand managers to “close the loop” and prove returns on advertising spend.

A move into retail media could contribute to solving e-commerce’s essential profitability problem (even as you grow your orders, you need to pay more people to deliver them) by opening up a higher margin revenue stream with fewer costs.

More broadly, it speaks to the increasing importance of advertising against consented, first-party data to demonstrate effectiveness and maintain user privacy.

Guidance and fine targeting in a heavily regulated industry

Key to this story is the importance of the heavy regulation on alcohol and its promotion, which means that brands do a lot of awareness building work rather than highly-targeted campaigns. Drizly’s niche is in offering much greater granularity.

“Drizly is one of the few partners where we have been able to bring a holistic campaign strategy to life with rich storytelling through advertising on their marketplace,” says Emma de Szoeke, SVP, consumer insights, analytics & business growth at Moët Hennessy, in a statement.

 “We know our partners are shifting to an omnichannel approach in how they market their brands to consumers, and Drizly Ads will play an important role in their overall campaign strategy,” explains Amit Patel, SVP of Drizly Ads and Partnerships. “With Drizly Ads, brands of all sizes can advertise directly to one of the largest audiences of high-intent alcohol shoppers in North America.”

Parent company Uber has also spoken about the importance of advertising to the wider Uber business, which has targeted $1bn in advertising revenue in the coming years, in an effort to uncover bigger margins.

Sourced from Drizly, GroupM, WARC. 
^{[Image: Drizly]}