How Contextual Commerce Can Boost Your CPG Advertising Strategy in a Cookie-less World

With the CCPA, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency and, of course, Google’s plan to phase out third-party cookies by 2024, performance marketing is undergoing major disruption as consumers demand more data privacy and regulation. So more and more, it’s paramount for brands and advertisers to shift their reliance away from third-party cookies in order to successfully (and respectfully) influence consumers. How? Through contextual advertising that reaches high-intent shoppers. Here are three contextual tips for brands and agencies to consider when advertising within the CPG space moving forward.

Understand and Fit Into Rituals

In order to actually move the needle on sales, brands need to understand how their product fits into the broader context of customers’ lifestyles. Where are you presenting your brand so that adding a product to a grocery list becomes contextually identified with their shop? When in the shopper’s journey are you reaching them: is it via paid search on the retailer’s website, or earlier than that through contextually relevant content? There are various ways to do this while simultaneously aligning digital and in-store tactics, reaching shoppers who are moving their purchasing decisions to digital on- and offsite environments, driving campaign performance, and meeting the objectives of all stakeholders. Consider ways for your brand to reach shoppers earlier in their shopping journey: the inspiration stage. 

9 out of 10 Americans use recipes to “create” their shopping lists. This makes the list one of the most powerful places for a CPG brand. With so much inspiration at their fingertips, from Pinterest boards to recipe blogs, list- and basket-building happens constantly. Grocery shopping is a ritual deeply ingrained into their weeks -- usually Saturdays -- and if they’re considering trying new products, those products need to fit into their already-established routines.

As consumer behavior and shopping habits have shifted so dramatically across both in-store and digital channels, the path to purchase is murkier than ever before, which is exactly why brands have been implementing omnichannel strategies. However, now it’s time to take it one step further by implementing contextual commerce strategies.

“Contextual commerce is the idea of creating shoppable touchpoints within the right context for the user in order to engage with them more efficiently,” explains Yuni Sameshima, CEO and Co-Founder of Chicory on Kaspien’s podcast hosted by Kunal Chopra.

Forget Personas

A major misstep with CPG advertising is the overreliance on shopper personas. Despite best intentions, it can often dampen the potential impact of messaging. Consider the Don Drapers of the world, pitching something along the lines of, Great! So, we’ll put together a creative that talks about how to buy yogurt cups as a part of your kid’s balanced breakfast; done! You might be missing something. 

Source: https://gfycat.com/somewavyfreshwatereel-mad-men

We’re not saying personas are useless or passé; it’s about “re-inventing the way that you build personas [...] to understand [your] customers as deeply as possible”, as LinkedIn Marketing Solutions put it. In today’s world where personalization dominates as the best way to reach shoppers, why would we continue to paint customers with such broad strokes? 

Instead of trying to predict the habits of a broad classification of people that you deem in-market, get smarter about addressing consumer behavior. As data regulations restrict, leaning into contextual as a targeting tactic becomes a no-brainer for brands and agencies. Creating a contextual commerce strategy will create even more opportunities to reach high-intent shoppers during the inspiration stage before they’ve even reached the retailer’s e-commerce site. The context in which you reach shoppers is what will become your most powerful marketing tool.

In a meeting with the VP of Marketing at a major chicken brand, co-founders Yuni Sameshima and Joey Petracca asked, “How do you think about reaching shoppers?”

Rather than thinking in personas — especially as data regulation tightens and changes behavioral targeting practices —it’s time to address user habits instead.

Look at it this way: instead of programmatically targeting “chicken” across the web and running the risk of placing an ad for your organic chicken thighs alongside a chicken Halloween costume, instead, you’ll contextually serve ads within recipes that call for chicken or within meal planning apps that help shoppers decide on dinner options.

Consider Everyday Occasions

Let’s talk about user habits. Take Halloween, for example, ghosts and ghouls come out of hiding and wipe shelves clean of confections and candies, selling out inventory. Halloween will always be a tentpole activation for candy brands, but that doesn’t mean that this is the only thing they should bank their dollars on. Consider the more natural, re-occurring usage occasions of customers. What story can you tell about how your brand can fit into those daily life moments alongside other favorite products?

Consider leveraging social media and better yet shoppable recipes. With 83% of consumers indicating that they use digital recipes to prepare their grocery shops, using technology like this provides insight into what content potential buyers engage with and helps the brand understand where those shoppers are and more.

If you’re ready to future-proof your brand’s marketing plan, give us a shout. Chicory’s contextual commerce approach combines contextual advertising with shoppable tech— driving sales for the world’s leading CPG brands and retailers.