Retail has become one of the fastest-growing ad media in
the United States, but has traditionally lagged in technology enhancements and innovation.
Sam’s Club on Tuesday released a real-time display advertising service available across
tens of thousands of sites on the open web through Sam’s Club Member Access Platform (MAP).
As advertisers bombard consumers with repetitive or irrelevant ads due to inaccurate and
incomplete data, repetitive ad targeting has increasingly become a major challenge.
The new MAP feature -- provided in partnership with The Trade Desk and LiveRamp -- relies on the
company’s first-party member data, advertiser data, and AI-powered real-time behavioral insights from Sam’s Club to inform and personalize ads.
"While we can’t speak to the
length of time specifically, we can say that LiveRamp connects us with The Trade Desk, and together we have been running alphas since November," a spokesperson told Search & Performance
Marketing Daily.
Sam’s Club MAP, initially introduced in June 2022, is able to use The Trade Desk’s KOA Optimization technology to leverage AI and machine
learning, and LiveRamp’s data permission-based controls.
Mic Zavarella, vice president of marketing at PepsiCo, told Sam’s Club that that the company has been waiting a long time
to use first-party data from Sam’s Club.
Sam's Club designed MAP to solve the challenge of repetitive ad targeting because it is based on real-time, accurate data from registered Sam's
Club members -- including exact data on purchase history, demographics, recent purchases of similar items and basket size — data not available on other retail media platforms.
Personalized ads are targeted to members who have expressed interest in a product but have not yet made a purchase.
MAP also can stop serving ads to members on or off Sam’s Club
properties once the member makes a related purchase.
Advertisers can track retargeting results such as incremental return on ad spend (iROAS), a measure of the impact of any given marketing
effort on revenue, to the point of sale, by using MAP’s reporting feature.
MAP, which can serve ads to consumers even when they are not on Sam’s Club properties, allows advertisers
with complementary products to target relevant ads between order placement and club checkout.
The company outlined a variety of scenarios in which MAP can work -- for example, when a member
browses a specific item on the Sam’s Club website or placed an item in their cart, but did not complete the purchase.
When a member visits a specific landing page, brand page, or shelf
page on Sam’s Club, but did not make a purchase or when a member places an order online to be picked up in the club but still plans to shop at the club while they are there.