How can smaller brands win in a fragmented retail media landscape?

While established networks have massive reach, trends show that we’re in an increasingly fragmented world. So seeking moments to win in this space, means smaller brands should focus on building loyalty through engaging, customer-centric campaigns, and ultimately be where customers are, regardless of platforms.

Diversify spend 

Losing the buy box is a common problem for all brands - meaning that third party sellers can potentially dominate the Amazon Marketplace if they are reselling products at a cheaper price. This can have a larger impact on total sales for smaller brands. 

Opportunity for brands:

It’s important to diversify spend to be able to easily shift and optimize across retailers. 

While the likes of Amazon or Walmart are important for wider reach, when it comes to allocating budgets, there’s an opportunity to explore smaller or niche platforms. 

Consolidate your data

Brands need to be able to understand the customer trends across retailers to identify what is working or not and use those learnings to inform media strategy. 

Opportunity for brands:

Don’t be afraid to lean into AI solutions to optimize. For example, at Jellyfish, we’re able to see all retailer performance in one place, analyze audiences, inventory data and monitor effectiveness across all platforms, enabling us to activate the best strategy and implement in the correct places. 

Don't be afraid to experiment

Testing campaigns is important and being flexible and agile will help smaller brands make improved decisions on where to spend its budgets. 

Opportunity for brands: 

Create a robust testing and learn approach to track changes swiftly and help to build the most effective strategies will allow longer term gains. While it’s more work upfront, it pays off when you can monitor and track to effectively plan. 

Invest in creative

Each marketplace is continuously getting more saturated and it is more important now than ever to have engaging creative to stand out on the landscape. 

Opportunity for brands:

Utilize AI tools that work for you. For example, at Jellyfish, we deliver thousands of assets 55% faster using the AI platform, Pencil. It’s trained on $2.65B in adspend and 235K AI-generated assets. Pre-flight testing eliminates wasted spend and ensures from the moment campaigns go live, they are optimized from day one.