For example, a specialty retailer like Home Depot will have a lot of detail and scale that can apply not only to usage (paint, plants, power tools) but also to unique seasonality—spring, Black Friday, Labor Day, Halloween (giant skeleton anyone?) and Christmas are all predictable touch points that gather audiences throughout the year and likely share key behaviors that your brand is looking for.
What kinds of companies should consider it?
Companies selling services such as insurance, financial planning, legal, real estate, tutoring, education, lawn care, cleaning or moving can consider non-endemic advertising. It might also make good sense for a cruise line, an automobile company or a streaming service. While no one is coming to Amazon or Walmart to search for those services, people who purchase those services are most certainly shopping on retailer sites. And the DTC brand that wants the eyeballs of a national retail network but doesn’t want to fork over a chunk of its profits to the platform may very well consider it as well to drive traffic to its site.
Not everyone can play, though. Sites like dating, adult and gambling are often excluded. And some retailers won’t allow competitive advertising for services or categories they are in, like health care, ecommerce and financial services.
But in my opinion, this emerging form of advertising is the best thing to happen to lead generation in the past five years since LinkedIn. If you’re tired of paying more than $300 a click for head keywords or broad audiences on display networks that are powered by an OK level of behavioral and audience data determining relevance, then you might want to read on.
How do I start?
You’ll need to do research on the retailers themselves and their shopper profiles. Do they match up to who you’re looking for as a customer? In parallel, if you have a relationship with Amazon Advertising or other DSPs like The Trade Desk, Yahoo or Xandr, your friendly sales team will put you in touch with the right team.
There will be a lot of questions to ask about minimums, goals and if your budget range warrants a managed experience with the DSP and retailer. If not, and you have access already, you can search, filter and experiment on your own with what is available already in the platform today for some of the retailers. Once you narrow down which retailer, how much, how long and which audiences, it’s the usual setup for creative needs, tagging and landing page selection.
