The tremendous growth of the Internet and access to technology has made today’s shoppers more aware of their needs and provided them with more opportunities to meet those needs. This rapid change in consumer behavior has forced retail giants to look within and find unique ways to keep the customer engaged while meeting all the other challenges like online vs in-person shopping, pandemic-related health measures, social distancing, etc.
Whether this means rethinking their content strategies, relooking at how they target users, or strategically allocating their advertising budgets across an expanded number of media channels, retail marketers need to ensure that their brand stays relevant, flexible, and meets the customer’s digital expectations.
One of the companies driving this evolution is Brand Networks, a leader in software and media for the retail sector. They've partnered with us here at Spaceback to create an industry-first solution aimed at effortlessly distributing promotional content from retailers' social media channels through display advertising.
We're utilizing the Spaceback platform to automatically and instantaneously convert social media posts into display ads as soon as they are posted for a No Click Creative™️ automation solution. Through this unique capability, Brand Networks has been engaging Walmart customers in real-time across programmatic display advertising, utilizing unique social media content to bring consumers the latest deals, information, and updates from their local stores.
The social content that each Walmart store creates is locally relevant and allows for stores to build more authentic relationships with their community. Collectively Walmart stores are generating 30,000+ hyper-local posts a month, and until now, that content only lived in the social platforms for which it was created. With this solution, they can now instantly expand the reach, influence, and value of this content, while also reducing the need to produce costly ad creative for their display advertising efforts.
This unique solution has already been tested with select Walmart locations and is ready to be rolled out to all 4,700 Walmart stores across the US allowing Walmart to unlock their social content from the walled-gardens and programmatically target mobile devices within proximity of the store that posted them.
Jeff Zilberman, vice president, client services Brand Networks, notes that by enabling social media content to automatically power display ad creative, Brand Networks is doing something that has never been done before. This allows brands to have unique messaging and creative at a local level with the exponential reach of display. He further adds, "It would be completely cost-prohibitive to generate programmatic creative at this kind of scale using existing processes, but Spaceback's ability to automate the process leveraging live social media posts is what makes all of this possible."
An analysis done by Swayable, an independent research platform, proves that Spaceback Social Display format was 56% more effective than a standard banner ad at increasing willingness to try Walmart's new home-delivery option. One of the reasons for this improved performance is that our Social Display ads are authentic recreations of social media posts designed to deliver in traditional banner placements across the Web. Looking and feeling like authentic social content, Social Display ads are more engaging and provide a better user experience for the audiences.
The success of this solution proves that other brands can follow Walmart’s footsteps to reach their local audience with content that’s more engaging, effective, and authentic.
Click here to read the official press release.
Or you can get in touch with us or a Brand Networks representative to get started.
