Demand for on-line procuring has fallen nearer to pre-pandemic ranges following the frenzied highs of 2020. And platform modifications by Apple and Google imply it’s more durable for ecommerce firms to monetize their remaining viewers throughout browsers and cellular apps.
Slickdeals, a writer that aggregates reductions and coupon codes for on-line items, is popping to information partnerships and retail media to recoup income that displays its new regular.
About 91% of Slickdeals web site guests come to the location instantly, reasonably than being referred by way of social media or search, stated Eugene Faynberg, VP of advert operations. Which means Slickdeals hasn’t been as affected by the 12 months’s slowdown in referral site visitors like different publishers.
Nonetheless, site visitors is down from pandemic ranges, which limits affiliate and advert income from its web site and app. And the absence of concentrating on and attribution alerts like third-party cookies and IP addresses in Safari and Firefox, plus the upcoming deprecation of those alerts in Chrome, means programmatic browser advertisements command decrease CPMs.
To deal with these modifications and future-proof itself, Slickdeals has been activating its first-party information round what offers its customers are on the lookout for, stated Faynberg.
That first-party information is bolstering Slickdeals’ direct gross sales efforts and offsetting an industrywide decline in programmatic CPMs. That information can also be making advert concentrating on more practical for its native retail media stock as demand for retail advertisements ramps up.
Dealing in information
In April 2021, Slickdeals was trying to associate with a knowledge administration platform (DMP) in response to Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) initiative and in anticipation of Google’s cookie deprecation plans, based on Faynberg. That led to a partnership with Audigent. Previous to that, Slickdeals relied solely on Google Audiences, which “wasn’t very subtle,” when it comes to segmenting capabilities or tech assist, Faynberg stated.
Utilizing Slickdeals’ behavioral information, Audigent packages impressions throughout the net and cellular app into concentrating on segments based mostly on customers’ product pursuits.
For instance, a consumer looking Slickdeals for reductions on laptops will get added to the Tech and Electronics viewers section. This permits Slickdeals to make natural suggestions for associated gadgets like a mouse or extra monitor. However it could possibly additionally promote these first-party-data-enriched viewers segments to advertisers at a premium, both by DSP integrations with The Commerce Desk and LiveRamp, content material curation offers carried out by SSPs or direct insertion order.
Conducting extra premium direct gross sales has been “the one technique” that’s labored in relation to changing the income Slickdeals used to earn on iOS within the pre-ATT days, Faynberg added.
Along with curating its stock, Audigent additionally helps Slickdeals preserve monitor of attribution for its affiliate enterprise.
Slickdeals makes use of an Urchin Monitoring Module (UTM) code in affiliate hyperlinks to trace as customers click on from its web site to a third-party retailer’s. Audigent’s platform retains monitor of that attribution, which might be conveyed to the advertiser to show the effectiveness of Slickdeals’ advertisements, Faynberg stated.
Two advert servers
The increase to Slickdeals’ direct advert gross sales is particularly obvious in its retail media enterprise, the place it sells advertisements in its product suggestion feed. (These paid advertisements are distinguished from Slickdeals’ personal algorithmic suggestions by a “promoted” tag.)
As of now, these advertisements are solely bought instantly by Slickdeals’ partnership group, Faynberg stated.
The native placements come from an advert server maintained by Kevel, a customized advert server supplier that focuses on native placements that Slickdeals has partnered with since 2019. In the meantime, Slickdeals’ sidebar banner advertisements – that are bought programmatically by DSPs – are managed by way of Google Advert Supervisor (GAM).
Principally, Slickdeals makes use of Kevel for its retail media enterprise and GAM for programmatic. Slickdeals opted to make use of a devoted server for its retail media advertisements as a result of it ensures that these native advert placements load on the identical velocity as the remainder of its product feed, Faynberg stated.
Slickdeals makes use of its first-party information to curate advert stock throughout each servers, integrating Audigent’s DMP inside each the Kevel server and GAM.
That’s not a quite common use case, Faynberg stated, however this dual-ad-server method may turn into extra widespread within the post-third-party-cookie ecosystem, as publishers rely extra on direct-sold native advertisements.
Slickdeals additionally participates in non-public market (PMP) offers curated by Audigent, Google, Amazon and its SSP companions. Doing so permits it to pool its stock with different publishers’, offering the viewers scale that advertisers are on the lookout for, however that no particular person writer can present by itself, Faynberg stated.
Utilizing its understanding of first-party information to increase its presence in PMPs can be a serious precedence for Slickdeals within the coming 12 months, Faynberg added.
By curating advertisements, Slickdeals additionally needs to enhance the expertise for customers, he stated. “We’re turning what some folks may discover an annoyance when it comes to promoting right into a win-win for each advertisers and finish customers.”
