Tesco launches first-party-data media and insight platform | WARC | The Feed

Tesco launches first-party-data media and insight platform

British grocery giant Tesco is launching a media and insights platform to connect brands and their agencies with the retailer’s extensive first-party behavioural dataset from the longstanding Clubcard loyalty scheme.

Why it matters

Snappily titled Tesco Media and Insight, powered by dunnhumby, the platform aims to unite the retailer’s loyalty and in-store data with dunnhumby’s data science chops to create a closed-loop platform. It follows similar efforts by Walmart in the US.

Context: massive reach

Tesco claims its Clubcard is used by more than 20 million households. In dunnhumby’s telling, the new platform will open access to Tesco’s 27.6% share of the UK grocery market and 36% share of the online grocery market. Dunnhumby began its relationship with the retailer at the launch of the Clubcard in 1994 and is now wholly owned by Tesco.

Given the Clubcard scheme remains successful and popular, Tesco will have to be extremely careful with its deployment of ads on the customer side, given they will come through as personalised recommendations.

Effectively, that means it has a very compelling offer of both high reach media and a solid measurement platform, as a buyer should be able to see whether ad spend has led to instore or online spend. According to a trial, the measurement tools have allowed brands “to see the true return on spend, with an average ROAS of £6.60 with Tesco Media, compared to an average of £3.80 on other channels”.

On the media side, the company claimed to reach 58% of the UK population every week, putting it among some of the country’s biggest media owners, Marketing Week reported.

“Our new platform will bring together the wealth of customer knowledge we have, with the insights from dunnhumby, and use it in a way that helps our brands to be more efficient and targeted and ultimately to serve our customers better”, says Alessandra Bellini, Tesco Chief Customer Officer in a statement.

At the launch event, covered in part by MediaTel, Bellini compared the new system to offers from major US retailers like Walmart’s Connect and Target’s Roundel.

The effort fits into a much wider trend of retail media, and further emphasises the value of first-party data to companies well ahead of the decline of third-party cookies.

Sourced from Tesco, Marketing Week, MediaTel, WARC