How to Leverage Digital Audio with Top Retail Media Networks

May 7, 2024

Retail media networks allow brands to reach consumers where they buy everything from CPG products to electronics and influence shopping habits, creating a connection between their products and the specific retailer with which they purchase ad space. The term fish in a barrel comes to mind in terms of the ease, convenience, and relevant reach these networks provide for advertisers. But what if you could extend that reach beyond retailer media like apps and websites? What if you could prime your target consumers with relevant messages that tell a story, raise awareness, and reinforce key selling points?

You can do all that and more with digital audio.

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Take Your Messages Offsite

Retail media is one of the largest and fastest growing ad verticals in the US. According to a recent eMarketer forecast, it’s expected to grow 21% every year until 2027. Offsite media (like digital audio) is expected to be a large part of that growth, and with good reason. Offsite media allows you to reach consumers within the retail media network more places and at more points in the buyer journey.

With digital audio, your ads can reach listeners (also known as shoppers) throughout the day as they get ready, work, run errands, cook, do chores, and yes, shop at their favorite stores.

Find Privacy-Friendly Targeting Options

The data evolution is here. Third-party cookies and other legacy identifiers are eroding. And as they do, offsite media will play a bigger role in retail media network campaigns for advertisers. Through channels like digital audio, brands can capitalize on privacy-forward solutions that allow for data-driven targeting that isn’t impacted by increasing depreciation and legislation.

Embrace the Power of Audio

Audio ads give brands more time and tools to reach and resonate with your consumers throughout the path to purchase. Imagine if before a shopper saw an ad for a new line of haircare products on a retail app, she heard a 30-second non-skippable audio ad about the product while getting ready for the day. And in the ad, the voiceover artist gushed about the product’s intoxicating scent and luxe texture. How much more likely would this shopper be to respond to the display ad in the retail app and add to cart?

Digital audio allows brands to reach consumers across the funnel to influence those pivotal shopping moments.

Upper-funnel – Create awareness before they see an ad on their retailer’s website.
Mid-funnel – Reinforce key messages and showcase product differentiators.
Lower-funnel – Inspire action, drive to the retailer in store or online and boost add to carts.

Get in Their Ear

When it comes to memorable ads that get attention, audio ads outperform visuals. Digital audio ads have a bigger impact on long-term memory than TV ads by 36%. And audio ads receive 50% more audience attention than benchmarks across video, TV, social, and display, according to a study from dentsu and Lumen Research.

Audio ads are effective because they put the listener at the center of the ad experience, enticing them to insert themselves into the story. Through a symphony of voiceovers, music beds, and sound effects, the consumer can imagine what it’s like to use the products advertised.

Learn from Success

When Coca-Cola wanted to drive awareness and boost in-store sales for its new value collection, they turned to the Dollar General Media Network and Pandora to make it happen. We developed a 30-second audio to motivate Dollar General shoppers to get to the nearest location to make a purchase. And the results really hit the spot: