Albertsons Wants to Measure Your Dwell Time | Fast Five Shorts
This Omni Talk Retail Fast Five segment, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, Quorso, and Veloq, breaks down Albertsons’ expansion of cart tracking technology to measure retail media effectiveness.
Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga, alongside Shoptalk’s Joe Laszlo, discuss whether dwell time truly correlates with incremental sales and what this signals for the evolution of in-store retail media.
⏩ Tune in for the full episode here.
#Albertsons #RetailMedia #InStoreTech #GroceryRetail #OmniTalk
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Transcript
Albertsons is expanding a pilot program that uses tracking devices on shopping carts and in baskets to measure how long customers dwell in front of in store retail media displays.
Speaker A:All right, we're back into the store.
Speaker A:According to Grocery Dive, Albertsons is currently testing the technology in an 80 store pilot and plans to expand to about 800 stores this year.
Speaker A:Liz Roach, VP of media and measurement at Albertson said on a recent podcast that the initiative is driven by brands desire to collect more data, find ways for more incremental purchases and pinpoint cross merchandising opportunities.
Speaker A:The carts use beacon technology to anonymously detect wind.
Speaker A:Carts are in proximity to in store displays, helping understand overall engagement patterns and dwell time.
Speaker A:All sensor data is aggregated and not tied to the individuals with no personal or device level identifiers collected.
Speaker A:Wow, we've got a beacon story.
Speaker A:I thought we were done with beacons.
Speaker A:Question for you and let's go back to you, Ann.
Speaker A:Does Albertson's new cart tracker say more about where in store media is going or where in store retail media is now?
Speaker B:Now I would have to say where it is now.
Speaker B:I was shocked actually that the screens, they put Albertson's launch all these screens in store and there's I, I was like there's no camera or like nothing monitoring dwell time in front of the, the screens.
Speaker B:Like that shocked me.
Speaker B:There's so much out there and available.
Speaker B:So that, that's, that surprised me and I think shows that yes, we are still very early in determining what is going to be successful when it comes to in store media.
Speaker B:And, and you know, I don't think we're far off from getting to this higher level of fidelity because of some of the technologies that you know, people you and I have talked to, Chris, I'm sure people that will be showing up at Shop Talk, Joe, but, but Liz Roach is smart and I think alongside the Albertsons team, Liz was smart to deploy this pilot to get that additional data point.
Speaker B:You know, Liz saw we only have the screens in, we can see a lift in point of sale data.
Speaker B:But let's get that additional point data point for the brands who are advertising on these screens to really show in addition to, you know, increase in sales of your product, we're also seeing that people were in front of.
Speaker B:Even if it's a beacon, this is like an easy thing to just slap onto a regular cart.
Speaker B:No, no major technology infrastructure changes.
Speaker B:So I think, I think this is very, you can see Liz's leadership really, really coming into play here when they're saying look we got it.
Speaker B:We got to keep catching up.
Speaker B:However that might be low fidelity solution.
Speaker B:We're going to, we're going to do this and start to get to proving out the investment in the next wave of in store media and next wave of in store technology.
Speaker B:That's really going to move the needle.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker A:I'm going to go to, I want to give Joe the last word on this one because you know, he's been probably drowning in retail media preparing for shop talk here.
Speaker A:But yeah, no, I agree with, I agree with you and like, you know, I think it, you know, it says a lot to me more about where things are now, you know, because, and we've said this on the show many, many times.
Speaker A:Like we've, we've, I've, I personally have been very hesitant to sign off on all the digital screen investments that are going into the store because cracking the code on this is really hard.
Speaker A:And Liz Roach, to her credit, she said in the article, quote, dwell time likely equates to an incremental sale, but we actually need to test those models, end quote, to make sure that that is the case.
Speaker A:Which is an awesome admission that, that that's the theory at best right now.
Speaker A:But they don't actually know whether the impact is real.
Speaker A:That's really great for someone to actually come out and say that.
Speaker A:It's so transparent and candid.
Speaker A:And also the other point about this too that I think is important is we're not even attributing the sale to the individual level through this technology.
Speaker A:We're attributing it at upper funnels.
Speaker A:So there is still a long way to go.
Speaker A:But Joe, what do you think?
Speaker A:I know you're chopping at the bit to get in here.
Speaker C:Yeah, no, I love this topic.
Speaker C:I mean I think on several different levels like it so speaks to the disconnect between the digital world and digital style measurement.
Speaker C:What brands are used to be able to get as far as like kind of kind of outcome metrics from, from advertising that they do online to, to the real world, which is always, always, always been a lot messier and hard to measure.
Speaker C:You know, whether you're talking about out of home or even old school television advertising, much, much less like print.
Speaker C:So, so I think it's kind of interesting to see this, this low fidelity, low tech, low, low expense way of starting to get some, some very privacy friendly metrics which I love.
Speaker C:And it's very smart that Albertsons is kind of really playing up the fact that this is very you know, very friendly to the shopper.
Speaker C:Not kind of grabbing people's genders or other demographic data, just knowing a cart went by this ad and stopped for, or by this screen and stopped at this time for this long.
Speaker C:It's better than nothing.
Speaker C:It's probably not what a digital buyer is going to want as far as sophisticated metrics, but maybe it's a good enough compromise, at least for a start, as they start building up that, that basis of data that kind of tracks, you know, kind of correlations between dwell time and sales increases or dwell time and maybe kind of upper funnel metrics if they do like survey based research to try to get those.
Speaker C:So better than nothing.
Speaker C:I've always a fan, somebody at Shop Lux of all places, kind of said when it comes to evaluating technologies, don't buy the Ferrari.
Speaker C:If the Toyota is good enough.
Speaker C:And this is definitely a Toyota style technology and maybe it's good enough.
Speaker C:It's worth trying with marketers and see if, see if it works.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:It's reliable, it's tested and true.
Speaker B:It's definitely the Toyota of solutions.
Speaker B:Yes.
