Cooperative marketing — advertising and promotional programs in which a manufacturer supports the advertising efforts of a retailer — has seen extensive success in the offline realm. However, considering the sheer mass of audience data and publisher complexity involved, aggregating and using this data in a meaningful way has been nearly impossible to accomplish. Today, technology has finally caught up to the market need for digital co-op marketing.
Behavioral data, aggregated over time, provides a depth of insight into audience needs, but there is often a disconnect when it comes to taking action on that data. The key is leveraging targeting technology to reach out to shoppers on an individual basis, discover their specific wants and needs and then join forces to provide them with the most relevant and compelling offer(s) possible.
For instance, Panasonic as a manufacturer of TVs can intelligently mine the insights of Panasonic.com to discover what audiences want and then deliver specific and relevant brand messages. Frequency capping enables Panasonic to limit the number of impressions an individual user sees to avoid over-saturation, and a smart digital co-op program would facilitate a retail partner like Best Buy to use the remaining impressions to send messages to the same user with a local store promotion for the exact Panasonic TV they are interested in. Marketers and retailers benefit by boosting the likelihood of conversion and eliminating wasted impressions, while consumers receive a relevant advertising experience.
For digital co-op to be successful, both manufacturers and retailers have to see display as an “always on” media and realize they share a relationship with consumers throughout the consideration funnel. This requires cooperation from the beginning of the consumer lifecycle, ensuring that the sequential product and brand messaging is cohesive from ad to ad, and that each new impression offers an added benefit to the consumer.
As consumer media attention continues to shift online, popular programs like the newspaper circular are losing steam. Given the sophistication of today’s data aggregation and targeting technology, there is no reason that marketers cannot realize the benefit of shared customer marketing online. Digital co-op marketing creates a mutually beneficial playing field between manufacturers and retailers and provides never before seen shared reach to optimize media buys and drive maximum ROI.
