3 Types of Advertising for CPG Brands

For CPG brands looking to build awareness and boost sales of their products, there are numerous types of advertising that they can incorporate into their commerce media strategy. If brands select just one advertising strategy, they could miss out on certain outcomes, like high impression volume or high-intent shoppers. At Chicory, the leading contextual commerce advertising platform, we don’t believe that brands should have to sacrifice such goals. 

Here, we explore three types of advertising for CPG brands, how they work together and what they achieve.

Programmatic Advertising

The banner ad has remained a go-to tool for advertisers since its advent in the mid-1990s. But one problem with a nearly thirty-year tenure is that programmatic no longer aligns with the values of the modern consumer. Programmatic ads — and the banner specifically — were designed to interrupt a consumer’s internet browsing experience instead of enhance it.

While programmatic advertising has the largest scale, its mass reach means brands have less intentional reach. Programmatic advertising runs across a variety of environments, which may make for limited control over where your brand’s ads appear. This can be a huge threat to brand safety. Consider the use of blanket keyword targeting: this means that your ad for chicken breasts might appear within a negative exposé on farming practices. But with the right placement — like recipes — the chicken you’re selling could become the solution for millions of shoppers looking for that perfect weeknight dinner or family BBQ recipe.

Beyond risking brand safety, the broad reach of programmatic advertising means that brands are reaching shoppers at all different moments in their browsing experience, not just when they’re in buying or planning mode. This wide reach leads to low engagement: banner ads average an engagement rate of around 0.06% (Hubspot). However, shoppable in-recipe media drives three times higher engagement rates than standard display media.

Pro: Maximum impression volume

Con: Wavering shopper intent

Retail Media

As online grocery sales rose over the last few years, we saw the advent of retail media groups. Retail media strategies help brands advertise products directly on the retailer’s site. With ads for products being promoted directly on the retailer’s website, retail media allows CPG brands to advertise directly at the digital point of sale.

Retail media has become a staple of CPG advertising strategy. And as third-party tracking approaches its demise, retailers — and consequently, CPG brands who partner with them — are at a further advantage thanks to their copious amounts of first-party data. This data is perfect for targeting known shoppers, but it poses challenges in acquiring new shoppers for retailers. Furthermore, as privacy restrictions are increasingly enforced, this method of advertising will have a more limited impression scale.

Pro: Highest shopper intent, by advertising at point of sale

Con: Limited impression volume 

Contextual Commerce

For CPG marketers, contextual commerce is the layer between broad programmatic advertising and highly targeted, on-platform retail media. It delivers hyper-relevant ads in the right context, and at the right moment. By advertising within truly endemic spaces, food and beverage CPG brands are reaching high-intent shoppers during the moment of inspiration or in the planning phase of their shop. And as the death of the cookie approaches (despite multiple delays), contextual commerce presents a future-proof, cookie-less solution for CPG brands.

It’s all about finding the best context: for CPG brands, this means advertising within recipes. This off-platform activation strategy allows brands to extend their retailer marketing efforts, thus benefiting from the best that both programmatic advertising and retail media have to offer: high impression volume and high purchase intent, respectively.

Pro: High relevant impression volume, high-intent shoppers actively in the planning and inspiration phase

Con: None!

Interested in maximizing your advertising strategy? Contact us today to turn highly relevant content into commerce media.