Global commerce marketing firm The Mars Agency has launched its Retail Media Report Card in New Zealand, amid rapid growth in spending on retail media advertising.
The new scorecard comes on the heels of The Mars Agency’s expansion into the New Zealand market, when the company acquired brand activation agency The In Group earlier this year.
The Report Card evaluates the capabilities of eight leading networks across New Zealand and Australia in the grocery, pharmacy, liquor, and ecommerce sectors.
It examines 62 key capabilities across five performance areas — targeting, measurement, media opportunities, innovation, and partnership — and identifies the “table stakes” that all effective networks should offer.
“The state of retail media networks in New Zealand and Australia reflects a dynamic and rapidly evolving landscape, characterised by innovation, competition, and the quest for consumer engagement and loyalty,” says Sally Tobin, Managing Director ANZ at The Mars Agency.
“We’ve been helping our brand clients make sense of these increasing market complexities and identify the best investments for their media dollars. This Report Card is a tool we use to arm them with the intelligence they need to do just that.”
Marketers already view retail media as an unprecedented opportunity to reach consumers throughout the purchase funnel and down to the point-of-purchase, which makes these retailer-owned channels an attractive option for their digital marketing dollars.
In-store media opportunities are already a key piece of the retail media offering in ANZ, in contrast to other global regions where networks focus almost exclusively on digital opportunities.
Major retailers are building up sizable operations: Woolworths’ Cartology already has a substantial offering in both New Zealand and Australia.
Since late 2022, The Mars Agency’s US team has released a quarterly Report Card, while the agency’s European team also recently released their second edition.
“The Mars Agency is influencing and managing more than one billion dollars US in retail media globally, and this expansion of our Report Card is our commitment to another region experiencing immense growth,” says Ethan Goodman, EVP of Commerce Media at The Mars Agency.
“We took learnings from our US team and worked closely with retailers here to develop this Report Card as a tool to help both brands and retailers,” explains Dani Carlo, ANZ Commerce Media & Measurement Director at The Mars Agency.
The Report Card will be updated quarterly.
