Dive Brief:
Ulta Beauty unveiled a retail media network that leverages data from a rewards program the corporate claims is the biggest within the magnificence class, per a press launch.
The new UB Media platform attracts on 37 million client profiles linked to the model’s Ultamate Rewards. Advertisers utilizing UB Media can faucet into that data to tell campaigns spanning show, video, social media and influencer advertising, together with on-site sponsored product placements on Ulta-owned properties.
Ulta can also be offering “closed-loop” marketing campaign reporting companies that share insights into how promoting efforts are resonating. Retail media networks proceed to achieve traction, together with with specialty retailers that may supply manufacturers a extra tailor-made viewers and probably larger advertising precision.
Dive Insight:
Ulta is stepping up its efforts within the race for retail media {dollars} with the institution of UB Media. As these networks proliferate, retailers want to plan distinctive pitches to win over manufacturers that face no scarcity of choices. Ulta is leaning into its scale as the biggest magnificence retailer within the U.S., with a concentrate on a rewards program carrying tens of hundreds of thousands of client profiles that might assist entrepreneurs higher goal their campaigns.
“No one is aware of the sweetness trade and its viewers like Ulta Beauty,” stated Brent Rosso, vice chairman of UB Media, in a press assertion. “Our new providing reinforces our skill to have interaction friends the place, when, and the way they wish to join, with hyper-focused promoting efforts in a dynamic ecosystem and additional elevates our place as model accomplice of alternative.”
Rosso has been at Ulta serving to oversee UB Media since October, in line with his LinkedIn profile. Prior to the formal UB Media announcement, Ulta had a advertising program referred to as the Digital Marketing Partner Program. UB Media seeks to develop and enrich the corporate’s promoting suite to acknowledge the present omnichannel atmosphere.
Ulta began operating on-site show stock on its owned properties earlier this 12 months, for instance, and plans to introduce further codecs sooner or later. Display and sponsored product listings are the most well-liked advert sorts in retail media, however Ulta is trotting out some choices that may very well be of explicit curiosity to these in magnificence, corresponding to ones associated to influencer advertising.
Retail media within the magnificence class may get extra aggressive quickly. Sephora, a rival, was hiring for a senior director to assist spearhead its retail media network initiatives earlier this 12 months, per a job listings web page.
“Sephora is embarking on the event and launch of its personal retail media network: creating new worth exchanges for our model companions and accelerating advert monetization progress on our owned platforms,” the posting learn.
Ulta’s extra concentrated push into the area can also be attention-grabbing given its relationship with Target. The magnificence model operates tons of of shop-in-shops on the big-box chain, a tie-up that has been a boon throughout a extremely unstable interval for the retail enterprise. But Target has its personal retail media network referred to as Roundel that theoretically may vie for a similar manufacturers Ulta is chasing.
The digital advert market has had a formidable run of progress that’s been bolstered, partly, by the retail media explosion. Brands are flocking to the idea as they take care of the deprecation of third-party cookies — a key methodology of ad-targeting — and attempt to align their advertising messages nearer to the purpose of sale utilizing first-party shopper data. Other classes are actually chasing the identical successes retailers have seen. Marriott earlier this week launched the hospitality trade’s first media network.
https://www.marketingdive.com/information/ulta-beauty-retail-media-network-loyalty-program/624059/
