TF1 PUB, the media sales arm of French national broadcaster TF1, has signed a new partnership with Infinity Advertising, a data business formed out of an alliance of five large French retailers. The deal will make a large quantity of retailer data available to use against TF1 inventory, both for targeting and measurement, at a time when interest in retail data is particularly high.
Infinity Advertising was launched in August last year by retailers Intermarché, Casino, Géant, Franprix and Monoprix (the latter four of which are all owned by Casino Groupe). The alliance combines loyalty card, ecommerce, and in-store sales data across all of the retailers to power ad targeting and measurement. Together, the retailers involved have data on over 17 million loyalty card holders.
Infinity Advertising operates as a standalone offering, enabling advertisers to use its data for ecommerce placements and programmatic buys. Its consumer purchasing behaviour data can be used to create shopper segments, letting brands specifically target individuals likely to be interested in their products.
With this new partnership, this data will now be available across TF1’s PC, mobile, tablet, and IPTV inventory – though there’s been no mention yet of it being layered into addressable linear. TF1 says Infinity’s data will be matched with TF1’s 27 million registered users on MYTF1 in a cookie-free manner, allowing brands to identify Infinity Advertising customers across TF1’s audience base.
A big part of the offering looks to be based around proving ROI for campaigns across TF1’s digital inventory. Using Infinity Advertising data, brands will be able to measure the impact of TF1 campaigns in driving in-store and ecommerce sales.
Marrying TV and retail media
A substantial amount of the growth in retail media which occurred over the pandemic related specifically to ecommerce. With a lot of shopping forcibly shifted online, it made sense for brands to spend more to promote their products on ecommerce platforms.
But we’re also seeing more interest in using retailer data, both online and offline, to power campaigns outside of ecommerce storefronts.
And across different markets we’ve seen early trials of weaving this retailer data into TV campaigns too. While a lot of TV advertising is still primarily focused on brand-building, broadcasters are increasingly keen to be able to prove the power of TV to drive immediate sales.
To do this, it’s important to have access to robust retail databases which combine online and offline data. Digital display ads may lead users directly to an ecommerce store, making attribution fairly straightforward, but TV ads don’t work that way (save for those which use QR codes to direct audiences to checkout on their phones).
Thus, we’re likely to see more broadcasters seeking out similar deals to TF1’s, helping them prove the ability of TV ads to directly drive sales in the short-to-medium term.
