Unlock the Potential of Retail Media Networks with Audio

Retail media networks (RMNs) are a powerful addition to any advertiser’s media strategy, influencing shopping habits and forging connections with new audiences. But if you want to maximize their benefits, you need to add audio to the mix.

With its highly leaned-in listener base, positive environment, and go-anywhere access, audio is the perfect solution to take your brand’s messages further. And in our last webinar, we proved exactly that.

Adam Ross, Sales Director, Commerce and Retail Media Partnerships, SiriusXM Media, and Allison Pillsbury, Key Account Director, SiriusXM Media, got together with two of the leading experts from Kroger Precision Marketing: Jenn Lehan, Lead Programmatic Media Manager, and Kaitlyn Weber, Manager, Programmatic Media Buying.

Together, they showed how brands can use audio to maximize the effectiveness of the offsite media strategies, plus:

• A breakdown on how the two integrate to deliver maximum ROI

• Best-in-class, proven strategies to take your messages further

• Real-world examples of brands that did it well

• And so much more

If you’re ready to unlock all that potential, check out the on-demand webinar recording below.

And if you’re looking for the highlights reel instead, we have that, too. Take a listen to some of the key callouts from their conversations below.

There’s a Massive Opportunity Here.

“We're really excited about the growth that is projected for offsite. We think there's a massive opportunity for commerce teams, trade teams, and brand teams to reach new shoppers and to reach them in different formats where they're naturally consuming media. If you look at what eMarketer is looking at for 2025, they're projecting $14B will be spent in offsite media through retail media channels this year, commanding 20% of total media spend. And 56% of marketers are planning to increase their investment in offsite channels like audio.

And then even more specifically to audio, we know that 62% of retail media marketers that have run audio in the last 12 months already see audio as core to their media mix. So we're really excited about this opportunity for brands to lean in more to offsite to leverage all the power of data from our partners like Kroger to make offsite channels work harder for them.” - Adam Ross

The Four Secrets to Success

“What are we talking about when we talk about audio? We're offering you a non-skippable, 30-second canvas to really talk about your brand. It’s a great platform to do storytelling and complex messaging. Now, there's so many ways that brands have tapped into this, but some of the best cases for retail media networks include the following. So, number one: innovation. If you're launching a new product, you can use 30 seconds to explain what this product is, what the benefits are, what the features are of your new product...

Number two, we know lots of retailers have scale and mega events. If you want your consumers to know about four or five products, a 30 second spot is a perfect chance to talk about all of them.

Number three: seasonal or tentpole events... When you're thinking about these tentpole events, a lot of them are already tied to music... So, when your brands are talking about products around tentpole times, we can pair it and ensure that it runs in a contextual environment that makes sense. And last, let's think about cause marketing. Here is your chance to communicate all the good work that you are doing with your brand. It's really hard to do that with just a display ad.” - Allison Pillsbury

Insights, Audience, and Measurement Make the Difference

“Our foundation here at KPM is based on three things: insights, audience, and measurement. We offer actionable insights, not just data points. So this could look like finding customers online or in-store during times where they're more likely to purchase. We also can better understand basket building and propensity to try new products and so much more. Because we capture so much of this transaction data, our ability to segment that data into meaningful and targetable audiences is unmatched in the industry.

And also, 99% of our media provide sales and household penetration data for each campaign at the audience level. This allows us to prove the performance through nearly all activations against CROPA first-party audiences. The first-party data that Kroger has proves to be more effective and efficient, with an average of 3.9x higher household penetration, 5.1x higher sales per household, 51% of the reach to amass the same total sales outcomes, and 40% higher lifetime value when using KPM campaigns in Kroger’s first-party audiences—which is pretty crazy.” - Kaitlyn Weber

Audio Delivers True Performance

“Now, what I'm gonna take you guys through is some stories of how KPM and SiriusXM have partnered together. So, this first one is a single channel example to show the strength of streaming audio on its own. What you're looking at here is a success story from our partnership together, specifically leveraging inventory across Pandora and SoundCloud.

This case study covers performance across 43 various audio campaigns in four major categories, including food, beverage, pet, and health and beauty. The goal here was to generate return on ad spend, find new households, recruit new brand buyers, and drive sales and visit lift. We activated a mix of mobile and web audio placements and layered on KPM's advanced first–party audience targeting using purchase behavior and geodata to reach relevant streamers ages 18 and up. Creative also played a key role here. We leaned into high-impact audio storytelling using contextually relevant themes and sound effects to engage listeners in ways that align with their interests.

The results were impressive: $10.03 average ROAS, 25% uplift in sales and household penetration, a 26% increase in store visits, and a 46% trial uplift from new households. This shows that streaming audio, when activated with the right audiences and message, can deliver true performance—not just awareness.” - Jenn Lehan

The opportunities to bolster your retail media network strategy with audio are endless. Ready to make it happen? Let's chat.

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