Dive Brief:

• Ahold Delhaize has launched a new promotion amplification tool for manufacturers aimed at making temporary price reductions more visible to shoppers.

• The tool, developed in partnership with digital media firm Quotient, uses retailer point-of-sale and loyalty data along with weekly price-promotion data to trigger programmatic digital media on Quotient’s platform that then gets delivered to targeted shoppers.

• Ahold Delhaize and its digital media arm, AD Retail Media, are aiming to raise awareness of temporary price reductions, which often go unnoticed by shoppers, in order to drive store trips and larger basket sizes.

Dive Insight:

According to Quotient data, CPG companies run more than 2,000 temporary price reductions (TPRs) per week, but only 10% of those make it into retailers’ weekly circulars. The result, the firm says, is that hundreds of price promotions fail to reach their intended audience.

The new price promotion tool launching with AD Retail Media uses in-depth sales, loyalty and promotional data to target shoppers digitally with price reductions only while they’re available. Performance can then be tracked through sales, according to the announcement. 

Steven Boal, founder and CEO of Quotient, said in a statement that better awareness of price promotions can help shoppers plan their trips, both online and in-store. Meanwhile, Mark Williamson, vice president and head of media partnerships for Peapod Digital Labs, said the new promotion tool can drive higher sales and deepen shopper engagement.

“As we think about serving omnichannel customers, we have an even greater opportunity to connect customers to savings by delivering them through all the channels customers are shopping,” Williamson said in a statement.

Retailers like Ahold Delhaize are jockeying for manufacturers’ trade dollars that are increasingly shifting to digital. Innovations like this latest tool in partnership with Quotient aim to differentiate AD Digital Media from efforts by other companies like Walmart and Kroger as well as Instacart, which launched a self-service ad platform last year and has drawn more media spending from CPGs as its shopper base has ballooned.

Retail media businesses, which offer manufacturers promotional tools that leverage grocers’ first-party shopper data, also seek to boost digital sales at a time when marketing and fulfilling online orders continue to drag down profits. Kroger has said in recent earnings calls that its marketing business has made its overall digital business profitable, while Walmart recently overhauled its ad business to offer promotional options across its properties, including stores, app and Walmart+.