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“If we can hold everybody accountable to meeting these standards, I think it's going to be really a sea change in how we do business.”
— Kelly Kachnowski, VP of Marketing Tech at The Mars Agency
From Walmart Connect to Target Roundel and Amazon, brands have an array of choices for where to buy media. But as retail media has grown, so has the need for clear standards that foster greater transparency, accuracy, and accountability.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Media Rating Council (MRC), and experts from across the industry have joined forces to address this problem and create a landmark new set of guidelines for retail media and measurement.
In September, IAB and MRC released an initial draft of the “Retail Media Measurement Guidelines” for public comment.
Before the group unveiled the final version of the standards in January, the “Unpacking the Digital Shelf” podcast gathered some of the people involved and other industry experts to explore what this all means for brands and retailers.
In the episode “IAB/MRC Issues New Retail Media Guidelines,” they discuss why it was time to introduce standards, what implementation could look like for brands and their agency partners, and the potential impact the new standards could have on the future of retail media.
Jeffrey Bustos, the VP of measurement addressability at IAB, served as the lead for creating the new standards. Bustos says the standards have been two years in the making.
IAB started the effort by launching the Retail Media Buyer's Guide, an overview of tips and best practices in retail media, before bringing its Retail Media Committee together to develop measurement standards.
“The objective of the working group was bringing together retailers, brands, agencies, and active companies that were currently working on measurement to identify ways in which we could bring more transparency and consistency to measurement across the retail media ecosystem,” Bustos says.
While brands applauded the move to create standards, so did retailers, Bustos says.
“One of the most exciting parts of this is that most of the retailers do want to be standardized,” he says. “They're the biggest champion.”
For years, there has been a lot of waste in digital and programmatic advertising, making it difficult for brands to gauge what channels and platforms actually perform best.
Michael Schuh, VP of media strategy and product at Kroger Precision Marketing at 84.51˚, says more signals have created the opportunity for better media planning and media measurement technology, but they’ve also led to greater complexity as brands try to manage it all.
“With so many retail media players out there, and many of them doing it very differently — being on different parts of the maturity curve and where their business is — universal definitions and standards are just absolutely critical to help us speak the same language,” says Schuh, who was part of the IAB/MRC standards working group.
“They help brands ensure the measurement they're getting has a high standard of performance and accuracy that they can compare and just understand, transparently, what's happening with their media investment.” — Michael Schuh, VP of Media Strategy and Product at Kroger Precision Marketing at 84.51˚
Schuh adds that retail media standards are also crucial for accountability, something that has always been part of Kroger Precision Marketing’s mission.
“When we first launched and even throughout our journey, that's what we talk to brands about, is we want to help drive accountability with media investments,” he says.
“Accountability to real outcomes and these standards and the conversations that follow are really what's going to help a brand, an agency, or an investment team really understand the efficacy of their investment on one platform versus another.”
Kelly Kachnowski, VP of marketing tech at The Mars Agency, echoed this point.
As an agency, Mars is tasked with helping brands make the best media investment decisions, which has been an uphill climb in the Wild West of retail media.
“It's been a challenge because we are dealing with a lot of different information from a lot of different sources,” Kachnowski says. “The standards are really going to bring us closer to helping to make our brand clients make better comparisons so that they can make those strategic investment decisions.”
Kachnowski says the standards will create a more level playing field in the industry, given that the capabilities and sophistication of analytics teams vary. Custom reporting also is time-consuming and requires a heavy lift. While Mars has built its own measurement platform to help its brand clients, not every agency can do the same.
Creating standard definitions around measurement will bring more transparency to retail media.
“If we can hold everybody accountable to meeting these standards, I think it's going to be really a sea change in how we do business,” Kachnowski says.
IAB, MRC and the standards working group focused on six critical areas as they created the new retail media standards.
Data quality and processing means ensuring the data retailers give brands is reliable, accurate, and properly governed so that they can make more informed media planning decisions
Defining foundational principles for how audiences are developed and measured will enable brands to better understand the reach, engagement, and composition of the audience exposed to a campaign
Creating a taxonomy for in-store zones will improve audience targeting and allow for a better measure of shoppers’ exposure to advertising messages.
Ad delivery and viewability will allow brands to go beyond the standard definition of impressions and use an ad’s visibility as a more accurate way to measure impressions.
These new standards will create more clarity and transparency around the data and methodologies used to measure incrementality.
Identifying specific metrics that must be defined and standardized across all retailers will allow brands to more easily compare performance across retail media platforms.
The guidelines offer a framework — rather than strict, prescriptive requirements — for how brands and retailers can engage with each other as the retail media space evolves.
Bustos says it was crucial that the standards were straightforward to implement and could be adopted with technology many brands and retailers already use today.
The group also wanted to focus on outcomes-based metrics rather than vanity metrics that don’t really provide insight into ad effectiveness.
Schuh adds it was important to get back to basics because retail media is still media and therefore needs a common language and foundation from which brands and retailers can both operate.
“There are very well-established standards for what it means for an ad to be viewable. Retail media is not a separate channel. It's media, and to date, with how fast retailers have grown up as media companies, it's been really inconsistent in how some of those standards have been followed or applied,” he says.
As Schuh suggests, establishing standards is a necessary first step if brands and retailers hope to achieve better outcomes and drive more engagement and conversions from their campaigns.
Retailers, brands, and agencies all will need to develop a plan of action for how to implement the new retail media standards.
Kachnowski says Mars plans to start by incorporating the standards into its “Retail Media Network Report Card” to provide a measure of how retail media networks are living up to the new guidelines.
Internally, she says the new standards will give her agency more information it can use to make better measurement and reporting recommendations to brands as they decide which retail media platforms to invest in and at what level.
On the retailer’s side, Schuh says the new standards will hopefully encourage more transparent conversations between buyers and sellers.
“It's just going to create a bridge and create a more productive conversation on what needs to be true to enable a certain retailer's capabilities and data measurement offerings to really influence that brand's investment in a bigger way,” he says.
Bustos says the new guidelines give brands and retailers room to innovate. IAB and MRC plan to release various guides and supplemental materials to educate brands, agencies, and retailers on the standards, since much of the information within the guidelines is very technical.
In the future, IAB also is considering audits for retailers, a full retail media certification, and building out more robust standards for in-store metrics and measurement.
Schuh says that while the standards are about laying a stronger foundation for retail media, there are larger implications for the industry’s future.
“This isn't just about changing retail media, or shopper marketing teams, or even commerce or brand teams,” Schuh says. “This is about changing the entire industry. This is about having meaningful conversations on sales and attribution, on real business outcomes. These standards are going to enable that.”
To learn more about the new IAB/MRC retail media standards, listen to the full episode.
