3 signs your onsite retail media ads are leaving money on the table

The commerce media landscape is buzzing with investment activity, as retailers race to scale up new advertising businesses. While the latest push has focused around offsite and in-store media placements, many retailers are overlooking a crucial element: maximizing the potential of their owned and operated sites. 

Onsite advertising remains the highest margin and largest growth lever for retail media. According to eMarketer, onsite ads drive a whopping 80% of retail media revenues and account for 70% of the category's growth. With such substantial upside at stake, it's critical that retailers ensure they’re not leaving money on the table. 

Here are three tell-tale signs that your onsite retail media ads have untapped value.

1. You’re not using advanced machine learning to drive performance

If your onsite ads still rely on static auction rules or basic targeting, you’re missing out on the transformative power of advanced machine learning. 

Relevance is paramount in any ads business, and real-time ML is the only way to support 1:1 personalization for millions of online shoppers. Traditional cost-per-click (CPC) auctions may be familiar, but won’t be able to optimize for the user experience or advertiser outcomes. This can be a fatal gap, as outcome-based bidding strategies, such Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) or Target CPO (Cost Per Order), are the magic bullet that can unlock uncapped advertiser budgets. 

Without the ability to deliver highly personalized ads in real-time, and optimize ad decisioning for a range of advertiser goals, you’re effectively putting a ceiling on your ad revenue potential.

2. You’re not using automation tech to scale demand

Do your retail media ads primarily serve big advertisers through a white-glove 'managed' service? If so, you're likely overlooking a significant revenue stream: the long tail of medium and small sellers and advertisers, when put together, can collectively outspend even blue-chip clientele. 

Automation technology is key to tapping into this market. It enables you to onboard and manage many advertisers efficiently, sometimes even tens of thousands of sellers, in just weeks during peak shopping periods. More sellers competing for each ad placement increases auction density and pushes bid prices up, meaning higher revenue from the same number of ad placements. 

3. You’re not looking for creative ways to scale inventory

“Limited inventory” is one of the most persistent myths in retail media. Many retailers impose artificial limits on their onsite ad inventory, believing that more ads will harm the user experience and have a cannibalizing effect on organic product listings. However, this self-imposed barrier often stems from suboptimal ad performance.

Better ads — more relevant and engaging — drive higher click-through rates (CTRs) and faster budget utilization while helping consumers more readily discover new products they may like. This improved performance means fewer ad impressions to achieve advertiser goals, effectively allowing retailers to scale up their inventory by 50-75% without negatively impacting the organic shopping experience.

If you're not continuously seeking ways to increase your ad inventory, you could be holding your business back from 2-3x higher ad revenues on your same existing supply.

Moloco unlocks the full potential of your retail media ads

With their high profit margins, onsite ads are the rocket fuel of retail media. Better ad performance also sparks a virtuous cycle, unlocking higher demand and faster budget utilization, which in turns opens up more supply, scaling both sides of the business. But, so far, only major e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart are fully capitalizing on this opportunity — using onsite profits to invest in everything from lower prices to expanded supply chains. 

The good news? Retailers don't have to become a major technology company to maximize their onsite ad potential. Partnering with the right commerce media platform — one built with real-time ML and automation at its core — can transform any retailer into an advertising powerhouse, unlocking more revenue with minimal effort. 

‍Get started and maximize onsite ad revenue with Moloco.