On this week's episode of The MadTech Podcast, Abtin Fanaeian, head of market expansion Asia at Quantcast, joins ExchangeWire CEO Rachel Smith and research lead Mat Broughton to discuss search ad spend, attention, retail media and more.

Retail media sends search ad spend up

Is retail media the biggest opportunity in ad tech right now?

Retail media is driving search ad spend upwards at a greater pace than other media channels in the US. According to Insider Intelligence, income from search advertising will grow 18.7% this year for retail media, whereas other search advertising will rise by 5%.

Most of this retail media growth will come from Amazon, which is expected to account for USD$23.95bn (~£18.84bn) of US retail media search ad spend in 2023 (which is forecast to total USD$29.69bn (~£23.36bn). Advertisers are increasingly relying on retail media for search because of these ads’ proximity to the point of purchase and because of retail media networks’ access to first-party data.

Creativity remains key to capturing attention, argues industry veteran

Is a lack of creativity the root cause of advertising’s attention problem?

Creativity is the solution to the pressing issue of attention in advertising. That’s the view of marketing veteran Tom Roach, who notes that marketers should seek to employ ‘best practice’ for individual digital channels in order to maximise the attention that their ads garner. Key to this is recognising which styles and formats best suit specific platforms, which can generate higher attention per ad and build stronger brand equity. 

Marketers should also take note of the success of some digital native creators in capturing the attention of elusive audiences, Roach argues, citing TikTok’s claim that creator-made output frequently drives better brand recall than creative from professional marketing teams. Advertisers may want to consider influencer marketing more seriously to avail of platform-based creators’ craft, although they should remain thoughtful about how many platforms to use and what will work best on each domain.

Walmart broadens retail media network

Could this move prove successful for Walmart, and could we see competitors doing the same thing?

US retail giant, Walmart, has announced plans to expand its retail media network. Walmart Connect, which launched in 2021, will use slots on the company’s radio station and other existing in-store infrastructure, such as digital screens near the self-checkout and sponsored free sample stations, to promote partner brands.

On top of leveraging its 4,700 brick-and-mortar stores, Walmart is also set to join forces with NBCUniversal to enable brands to use Connect to display their ads during live sports streams. While retail media’s high margins make it an attractive proposition, Walmart will need to act judiciously in order to avoid degrading the user experience. Walmart Connect SVP of retail media sales, Ryan Mayward, told CNBC that the firm has been implementing new advertising inventory “in a very deliberate and cautious way.”