Kroger, Tops and Smart & Final Gain Adult Beverage Insights
Advances in marketing efficiency and improved targeting have come to the adult beverage category with the introduction of a new media solution from Inmar Intelligence powered by first-party data from Kroger, Tops, Smart & Final and others.
It is a notable development for a category where an estimated $7 billion is spent annually on advertising and comes as retailers and brands are moving fast to leverage technologies that improve marketing efficiency and targeting.
“In partnership with leading retail grocers, Inmar Intelligence’s powerful technology closes the loop between advertising investments and explicitly identifies and connects sales tied to adult beverage campaigns,” said Aaron Kechley, the firm’s general manager of media and data. “Adult beverage brands can now optimize their advertising budgets like never before through precise targeting and campaign auto-optimization based on specific, near real-time category purchases.”
It is this attribution capability – to know which advertising worked and with whom – that is considered innovative, and because attribution can happen in near real times, campaigns can quickly be optimized. Running on Inmar’s customer data platform branded as ShopperSync, the solution complements traditional retail incentives practices, allowing adult beverage brands to deepen their customer relationships and capture market share while running targeted programmatic media, according to Inmar.
In addition, the enhanced capability of Inmar Intelligence’s data network provides brands with the ability to precisely target verified purchasers of adult beverage products and measure the impact of media on omnichannel sales down to the category, brand or UPC level. It is a shopper-centric approach that uses retail purchase data from Kroger, Tops and Smart & Final, among others, to report on sales as they occur, while auto-optimizing media performance in real time – driving efficiencies, maximizing budgets and increasing sales, according to Inmar.
“Adult beverage brands and advertisers have long been charged with cobbling together unverified data from third-party data providers and brokers in order to execute on an assumed addressable market,” said Kechley. “In combining our first-party retail data with that of leading grocery brands, adult beverage advertisers now have unprecedented access to verified, in-store shopper data, allowing adult beverage brands to generate transparent audience segments and direct advertising dollars toward consumers with a level of precision like never before.”
The activation of first-party grocer data positions adult beverage brands to accelerate digital transformation, increase shopper loyalty and profitably drive sales and comes as competition continues to accelerate in the race for consumer attention in the adult beverage market.
Cincinnati-based Kroger employs nearly half a million associates who serve 11 million-plus customers daily through a digital shopping experience and almost 2,800 retail food stores under a variety of banner names. The company is No. 3 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2021 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. Williamsville, N.Y.-based Tops Markets operates 157 supermarkets, with five additional franchise stores, in New York, northern Pennsylvania, and western Vermont. The company is No. 66 on The PG 100. Commerce, California-based Smart & Final operates 254 locations, including larger-format stores under the Smart & Final Extra! banner that combine a warehouse-store format with traditional grocery offerings. The company is No. 59 on Progressive Grocer’s list.
