“As Google continues to work on deprecating third party cookies, our access to first party deterministic data is the biggest superpower” available to retail media, according to Flybuys’ Lauren Dulhunty.
Dulhunty, the product owner for Flybuys’ data arm Unpacked, claimed that “with great power comes great responsibility” at Ashton Media’s Programmatic Summit yesterday.
That means retail media businesses need to ensure the sector’s growth is sustainable, Dulhunty argued, and exercises responsibility around data privacy.
“I would love to see data cleanrooms become the norm, and almost be baked into everything that we do,” she told Mediaweek after her presentation.
“Anywhere that we are sharing data that is then going to be collaborated on, whether we’re just sharing and someone’s using that data for activation of their audiences, or whether it’s data that we sharing to be augmented by partners for whatever reason.
“Those are the things that we love doing, but being able to do those in a privacy first way is so important.”
Retail media has experienced a surge of investment, estimated to grow to $2.8 billion in Australia by 2027. Dulhunty spoke about retail media commanding brand new budgets, rather than grabbing budget from other channels, and that’s “really exciting to see”.
The ad tech specialist continued that with increased investment in the space, media buyers are looking for access to first party data, and reaching shoppers at the point of purchase.
She listened in at the conference last year, as “brand after brand, agency after agency talked about how they were trying to solve the problem of closing the loop of attribution between online and offline sales.
“And we are, as a channel, fairly uniquely placed to actually do something about that, and actually provide that data.”
Flybuys has more than 9 million active members, with 80% of Australian households actively collecting points. 20 Flybuys cards are scanned per second.
Dulhunty said that her role as part of the loyalty program business requires “understanding your members at a very granular level, and using that purchase data to provide them with some value in return.”
Before joining Flybuys in mid-2022, Dulhunty worked in other ad-tech roles across Europe at businesses including Verizon and Microsoft. She added that, in her experience, marketers can’t afford to focus solely on their business’ tech stack in isolation.
“You have to think about not just your tech stack but the tech stacks that others have. If you’re thinking about your own tech stack, it’s got to be: how do I receive data or generate data? How do I store it and organise it?
“What tools am I using to segment that data? And then what platforms and tools am I using to push that data into the ecosystem so we can meet our customers and our members where they are?”
The Programmatic Summit also featured marketers from Johnson & Johnson, Treasury Wine Estates, and Dunkin’ Donuts Switzerland, plus local agency leaders.
See also: IAB launches foundations of retail media e-learning program