Superapp Advertising & differences in Retail Media between East and West.

While retail media has been around for years, it has become one of 2023’s industry buzzwords, and for good reason. According to recent figures from eMarketer, advertisers are actively shifting their spend to Retail Media Networks across the globe, taking advantage of scaled intent and transaction-based audiences, advanced data capabilities, and closed loop measurement, in order to influence consumers before the point of purchase, on and off a Retailer’s Owned & Operated (O&O properties). The Third Big Wave of digital advertising is attractive to a Retailer, who has typically engaged in various forms of trade marketing in their brick and mortar operation, but sees Digital Advertising as a significantly higher margin business and way to form stronger relationships with their product supplier partners, in turn boosting their P&L and Advertiser base.

The largest Retail Media (digital) participants in the West are major names in retail: Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Tesco, with many others emerging. In the East, two types of players are shaping the retail media landscape. First, ecommerce players such as Alibaba and Rakuten in North Asia, Flipkart in India, and Shopee and Lazada in Southeast Asia.

SuperApps

There’s a second type of player emerging rapidly: superapps. According to a recent study by Marketing Interactive across 100 Southeast Asia-based senior marketing executives, 51% believe superapp advertising is its own distinct media category and 80% expect it to be on the rise in 2023. For those that have not heard of the term ‘superapp’, Wikipedia defines it as “a mobile or web application that can provide multiple services including payment and financial transaction processing, effectively becoming an all-encompassing self-contained commerce and communication online platform that embraces many aspects of personal and commercial life.” Gartner expects that by 2027, more than 50% of the global population will be daily active users of multiple superapps. Examples of large superapps include WeChat, Line, Kakau, Grab, GoTo, and PayTM.

So what is the difference between Retail Media and Superapp Advertising? Superapp advertising has all of the benefits of Retail Media, but also offers ad experiences that take advantage of the superapp’s ecosystem of Payments, Rewards, Research, Logistics, OOH, Branded Content, Chat, and O2O capabilities. In a 2022 survey of 18K Grab users across Southeast Asia, 75% felt that they better understood products that are advertised on Grab and 78% are more likely to buy a product they saw advertised.

The ability to reach unique, transaction-capable audiences, shrink the funnel, measure online and offline transactions, deliver a product, and reward loyalty, in a brand safe media environment with high impact ad formats, provides a unique opportunity not available in other digital media. Even with these benefits, 61% of senior marketers in Southeast Asia have never advertised with superapps, but plan to do so in the near future.

Getting Started

Most superapps, like Retail Media, require you to work directly with the superapp. This will be helpful in order to take advantage of the superapp’s capabilities and ecosystem. Ad formats vary, but you can most likely use what you are using on the Open Web and/or Social Media parts of your media plan. There are case studies showcasing Endemic and Non-Endemic Advertisers achieving significant branding and performance metric increases when leveraging Superapp ecosystems (‘endemic’ meaning consumers can transact via the Superapp for the Marketer’s product or services). Your best bet if you have not explored yet is to reach out to the superapp in your country to learn more.

In summary, retail media is a global phenomenon that will only continue to increase in importance, but Advertisers will be able to provide richer, full funnel consumer experiences via superapps in available markets. Time will tell if the superapp concept will be adopted in the West, but as of right now, Advertisers in the East can take full advantage in 2023.