Q&A: Bernd Bube, Founder and CEO, ADvendio
Used across the globe by leading international retailers, ADvendio provides omnichannel advertising management solutions for retailers.
What is your background?
After spending several years working in the media industry, I founded ADvendio in 2004. I realised that there was a gap in the market for a full process solution designed specifically for advertising management.
At the time, there was nothing available in an easy-to-use format and most systems took a lot of development work to implement effectively. Digital advertising was highly fragmented, and it was clear there were many inefficiencies across media channels. A solution was required that joined several platforms into one to create something that was viable for any advertising enterprise no matter what channel they focused on. That solution was ADvendio, a cross channel advertising sales, order and finance platform that brought together all departments involved in selling advertising and made the process easier for everyone.
We have now further developed that platform to specifically support Retail Media Networks and now work with leading brands and retailers, including Albertsons, Ahold Delhaize, ULTA Beauty and Groupon, supporting their media network capabilities by offering media buying and selling holistically on one platform.
What does your company do?/ What is your USP?
ADvendio provides omnichannel advertising management solutions for retailers. Our USP lies in the strength of our Salesforce-based platform that is easily integrated and combines media selling and media buying technology in one place, providing the ultimate Retail Media Network hub for retailers to run highly successful, revenue-generating campaigns.
Used across the globe by leading international retailers, the platform provides full visibility into both in-store and digital advertising efforts, facilitating a holistic view on campaigns, enabling retailers to optimise strategies and make data-driven decisions to drive retail media growth.
Our order management system streamlines advertising orders for effective campaign execution, and we offer media-specific cross-channel billing capabilities tailored to retailers, to ensure accurate and streamlined finance processes.
What’s special about the platform and your approach?
Our key differentiator is that our platform is an all-in-one solution with seamless integration into existing IT infrastructures, facilitating a smooth implementation and transition for users across multiple departments.
Moreover, ADvendio empowers retailers with advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, enabling data-driven decision-making and campaign optimisation. The platform’s commitment to revenue maximisation ensures that retailers can effectively monetise their audience through targeted campaigns, both on-site and off-site.
ADvendio’s agile and adaptable nature allows retailers to stay ahead of the evolving advertising landscape, monetise their 1st party customer data, and future-proof their operations.
What does a product/ service implementation actually look like and how do you measure success?
ADvendio’s onboarding process follows a collaborative approach between our team of ad sales and media buying experts and the retailer. Aligned with the retailer’s goals, ADvendio focuses on key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with the retailer’s objectives to measure success.
These KPIs may include increased efficiency in campaign management, improved accuracy in reporting and billing processes, higher revenue generation, streamlined workflows, and enhanced customer satisfaction. We work closely with retailers to track these metrics, provide regular progress reports, and offer ongoing support to optimise performance and achieve desired outcomes.
How are retailers using your system to gain competitive advantage, and what does best practice look like? Can you share a case study with us?
Retail media has the potential to be the most complex channel ecosystem in the advertising industry. Many retail media businesses have 20+ channels, so being able to seamlessly sell, monitor, and optimise campaigns requires a platform that can plug efficiently into the existing retailer’s operations and tech stack, and scale in line with their business growth trajectory.
For example, Woolworths, Australia’s largest retailer for food and everyday needs, collaborated with ADvendio to develop its Retail Media Network-Cartology. The retailer was looking for a solution to manage its growing omnichannel ad sales business and was capable of handling fragmented data, as well as optimising end-to-end campaign and inventory management.
ADvendio’s Connect and Finance modules offered Cartology automation capabilities for campaign management, delivery data, and financial processes. This automation streamlined operations for Cartology’s internal teams and clients, resulting in improved efficiency. The selection and successful implementation of ADvendio were facilitated by Decipher Digital, a trusted Salesforce consultancy partner. Through the partnership between Cartology, ADvendio, and Decipher Digital, Cartology was able to align their business objectives and aspirations, leading to an enhanced client experience and paving the way for future growth.
When it comes to gaining a competitive advantage from the ADvendio platform, there are a few core areas where retailers see significant value.
Firstly, speed of quoting campaigns. Media is a notoriously challenging industry to quote effectively, as there can be so many discounts and pricing rules which affect a final cost. ADvendio automates this process, discounts are configured into the system and taken into account whilst also enabling sales to retain the commercial flexibility to approve a change outside of the standard model. Quoting fast and accurately is a big win against the competition.
Secondly, commercial agility is everything. A unique value of ADvendio is that you can price and bucket specific audiences and values, which means that when retailers leverage ADvendio, they gain a very flexible commercial model which can help them to monetise their first-party data quickly. Being able to develop these audiences and take them to market soon is a crucial value.
And thirdly, time to market. ADvendio customers go live quickly. The revenue generating opportunities that Retail Media Networks provide are down to the sizable nature of the market and its audience. To capitalise on these opportunities, retailers are looking to access the market quickly. With ADvendio, retailers have access to a ‘plug and play’ optimised solution, which delivers competitive market advantage.
Are there other companies you partner with?
ADvendio partners with several companies to expand the capabilities and offerings of our advertising management solutions.
Our recent partnerships with Google, Xandr, BroadSign and Pinterest, for example, offer retailers access to diverse advertising channels, technologies, and platforms. By leveraging these collaborations, retailers can enhance their advertising strategies, expand their audience reach, and achieve greater success in their advertising campaigns.
What challenges and opportunities do you see in UK retail for 2023/ What challenges are retailers facing in 2023?
Many retailers have been slow to recognise the potential of their existing owned off- and on-line channels to sell advertising to third party brands. With retail media, retailers are in control because they own the route to the customer, developing their direct and non-core businesses into offering retail media they can reap the benefits of monetising the traffic and data that they already own to create new – and sizeable – revenue streams from ads. For retailers, retail media represents a major opportunity to get returns from their investments in first party customer data gathered through transactions and loyalty schemes.
The digital marketing landscape is in a state of flux, so forward-thinking retailers should be exploring new avenues to drive the next iteration of retailer-brand relationships. Retail is a multichannel, multi-faceted sector, and retail media strategy should reflect that by filtering into all customer channels – both on- and off-line. Those retailers who can pivot to sell an audience-based retail media model, with flexible pricing and payment models, will gain competitive market advantage.
Key to success however will be in providing transparent campaign performance and return on ad spend (ROAS) across multiple channels. Having the ability to deliver this through one centralised solution, such as ADvendio, will allow them to track performance and surface this data directly to customers, making it a ‘big win’.
What is on the horizon for you as a company?
We want to expand our leading position and become the global ‘gold standard’ in retail media. We aim to integrate all the requirements for selling and buying in omnichannel environments and we’re on track to expand our product accordingly in the next two years.
Furthermore, our mission remains to make handling campaigns between agencies and marketers more efficient.
To find out how ADvendio can help your retail operation visit them online or connect here.
