What is the Ecommerce Media Platform?
The Ecommerce Media Platform (EMP) is an easy-to-use self-service system. It reduces the lead time for ads serving on the websites from several weeks to only several hours. The transparent cost per click (CPC)/cost per impression (CPI) pricing models allow for attributable results to be gained through mid-flight campaign optimisation and post-campaign analysis. One of the most important features is that EMP allows real-time campaign analysis for media performance metrics and sales metrics.
Types of service available (self-service vs managed-service)
There are two services available for EMP, self-service and managed-service.
Self-service clients are provided with onboarding training, access to live data reports on EMP, EMP campaign set-up training sessions, EMP campaign optimisation training sessions and access to EMP help pages to help facilitate optimal campaign performance.
Managed-service clients have everything provided to self-serve clients, in addition to a dedicated ad operations executive to set up and optimise campaigns.
1. Checkout before you go (Sainsbury’s)
The Check-out before you go placement is one of the most competitive placements. This placement allows products to be advertised and displayed before customers check-out of their carts. It is a great opportunity to showcase newly developed products, products on offer and unique products. It is a great way for brands to capture last minute sales. This placement is based on the CPC model (minimum bids starting from 45p).
Case Study: the average return on advertising spent (ROAS) for this placement is 248%.
2. Cross-sell (Sainsbury’s)
The Cross-sell placement allows sponsored products to be advertised under other products in the favourites section and the product detail page. It is a great way to introduce customers to complimentary products and newly developed products on promotion/as introductory offers. It is useful for encouraging category shopping. Where this placement excels at, is showcasing products to customers who are on a meal or regime-building journey. The key objective is to drive sales and increase customer awareness. This placement is based on the CPC model (minimum bids starting from 45p).
3.PDP App (Argos)
The PDP App page allows sponsored products to be featured at the bottom of the page on mobile devices. The objective of this placement is the same as PDP Web but it is unique because it provides customers with relevant recommendations while shopping from a mobile device, thus maintaining customer user experience. This placement is based on the CPC model (minimum bids starting from 45p).
4. Search – in grid (Argos/Sainsbury’s)
The Search in grid placement is one of the most competitive we have at Argos and Sainsbury’s. In this placement, clients would need to select the most relevant terms they want to surface against, including any common misspellings.
This placement is great for getting into customers baskets, promotions and getting newly released products in front of customers’ eyeballs. Only 3 sponsored products/SKUs will surface on the second row of results for Argos and on the top row of results for Sainsbury’s. This placement is based on the CPC model (minimum bids starting from 45p).
Case Study 1 (Argos): over 14.6 million impressions on this placement for the last 30 days (July-August 2022), 110k Clicks and 5.15% conversation rate (average).
Case study 2 (Sainsbury’s): the average ROAS for this placement is 567%.
5. Homepage Web (Argos)
This placement is located at the bottom of the Argos homepage. The benefit of this placement is it is potentially seen by every user who accesses the Argos website.
Homepage placements are great to create brand awareness, as these target a mass audience of customers and clients can add as many as 10 SKUs which will appear as carousel. It is worth mentioning that this placement should be used to increase visibility only, as the ROAS% tends to be lower. This placement is based on the CPC model (minimum bids starting from 45p).
Case Study: over 3.8 million impressions on this placement in the last 30 days (July-August 2022), 10k clicks and 0.22% conversation rate (average).
6. Banner X search (Sainsbury’s)
Search in grid banners will appear at the top of the results when customers search for the search terms you are bidding. With this powerful placement, you can target your banner on key search terms, types of products or complimentary terms to give inspiration to customers.
This display banner is ideal for showcasing a range of newly developed products, offers or seasonal offers and driving brand awareness through brand messages.
This placement is based on the CPI model (minimum bids starting from 5p).
Case study: 68.8% average increase in click-through rate using banners.
7. Banner X favourites (Sainsbury’s)
These banners show in the customer favourites section of Sainsbury’s website. This placement is ideal for getting into customer baskets and targeting the high proportion of customers who shop via their favourites (circa 40% of where product additions come from). It is great for promoting and bringing awareness of newly developed products to the forefront of a customer’s mind. In a similar way to the Banner x search, it is great for increasing your brand awareness to customers and promoting seasonal lines.
This placement is based on the CPI model (minimum bids starting from 5p).
Case study: 68.8% average increase in click-through rate using banners.
1. App Search – in grid product ad (Sainsbury’s)
This placement will appear as one of the top 3 product results of a customer’s search on the App.
This is a great placement for getting into customer baskets on the app and getting new products in front of customers’ eyeballs. Additionally, it is great for promoting bigger packs, seasonal lines, lower ranking products in your product portfolio and promotions.
This placement is based on the CPC model (minimum bids starting from 45p).
2. Offers homepage – above grid banners (Sainsbury’s)
These above-grid banners show on the Offers homepage.
This placement is perfect for surfacing your promotions (on offer SKUs) to customers across our desktop website, appealing to offer-savvy customers, surfacing promotions to engaged offer-driven customers, bigger packs and seasonal lines. This placement is based on the CPI model (minimum bids starting from 5p). In regards to all other shelves in hierarchy for adds to basket, this page is the most powerful.
Case study: 68.8% increase in click through-rate using banners.