Performance marketing agency Merkle launched New Stream Media this month. New Stream Media is a service was created to help retailers develop and support media programs to monetize their customer data and sell advertising on and off of their own websites.
The service came about because of the “consistent conversations around data” that Merkle found it had with its retail clients, who account for about a quarter of the agency’s client roster. “We saw a need to help retailers understand the value of their data and have consideration of the consumer along the way,” Emily Kramer, VP of New Stream Media. “We don’t want retailers to be providing data without context or consideration for their own business.”
“From a retailer perspective, you have relationships with your merchants largely as a result of shopper dollars committed to the retailer,” Kramer said. New Stream Media is also considers brands’ promotional media efforts. If a brand wanted to advertise a new product nationally across multiple media channels, a retailer can say, “We get who the audience is. We can target more specifically and optimize as a result of that. And ultimately, where there is statistical significance, we can report back to it in terms of sales. A merchant can’t do that because they don’t own the POS [point of sale].”
The measurement pieces and ad tech are fulfilled via Google Marketing Platform and Google Ad Manager. Retailers have the ability to manage advertising inventory on their own properties and target more broadly across Google properties using their own first-party data.