Unlocking next-gen growth with AI-powered retail media and Google

00:00:00: The U.S.

00:00:00: are probably one and a half to two years ahead of us when it comes to retail media simply because they had a head start in this development and now we're catching up and set them as is at the forefront of this.

00:00:11: I mean, if I look at what's shaping the retail media industry in the United States, I would say it's currently five things that I see very prominently.

00:00:26: shaping love brands

00:00:27: and

00:00:27: supporting

00:00:28: your long-term

00:00:28: growth through customer-centric marketing.

00:00:39: Hello and welcome

00:00:40: dear listeners and glad to have you on this show.

00:00:43: I'm Haiglari, Director Partner Marketing and Consultancy at Zalando Partner Marketing Services, helping connect fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands to consumers all over Europe.

00:00:54: Today I'm talking with Dr.

00:00:56: Janik Helbog, managing director retail at Google Germany.

00:01:00: We'll be talking about our outstanding partnership and how we bring our brand partners campaigns with additional media traffic to the next level.

00:01:09: This is actually the first time in inside fashion marketing history that we've invited one of our media partners.

00:01:16: We definitely see a huge value in bringing not just brand partners and internal experts to the podcast.

00:01:22: This way we can draw an even more holistic picture of the retail media sphere.

00:01:27: So, Janneke, usually we see each other at either the annual Lube Festival, for all those who aren't aware.

00:01:35: This is a big event celebrating our partnership between Google and Zalando.

00:01:41: Or we see each other at the Google Beach in Cannes, my preferred location.

00:01:47: So surely we're super happy to now welcome you to the show here.

00:01:51: But before we dive into the episode... In our last brand-centered episode with Vance, we asked Chiara Grimoldi to leave a question for our next guest.

00:02:01: Since our past episodes were kind of special ones, you now have the honor to answer her question.

00:02:07: And that is, what is one bold move you made recently that felt risky but turned out to be a good decision?

00:02:16: First of all, thank you very much, Heike, for having me.

00:02:18: I feel super honored to be the first guest from your media partners.

00:02:22: And a big hello to all the listeners out there.

00:02:24: It's a pleasure talking to Heike, and hopefully all of you will take away a few insights from our conversations.

00:02:31: Regarding your question, before I answer, I have to point out, Heike, that I noticed that you didn't answer Kiara's question either.

00:02:38: So maybe I can hear from you as well.

00:02:41: What was your bold move?

00:02:42: When it comes to my bold move, we briefly chat.

00:02:45: about it the other day, Heike.

00:02:47: We recently took our fourteen-year-old twin girls to boarding school in Vancouver, all the way on Vancouver Island.

00:02:55: So far away from home, I'm based in Hamburg, Germany, and they've now been there for a little bit more than a month.

00:03:01: We're still adjusting to them not being at home.

00:03:05: But we're also super, super happy how happy they are at the school in Canada.

00:03:09: So that's the bold move that I've recently done and about which I'm quite happy that I took the decision, even though it was a difficult one for us to take as a family.

00:03:19: Wow.

00:03:19: Yeah, that's really a bold move.

00:03:22: And yeah, thank you so much for sharing this here.

00:03:25: And I have to say, it's hard to come up with something that's equally bold.

00:03:31: So certainly I will miss that.

00:03:33: But you are right.

00:03:35: I didn't answer yet.

00:03:36: And if I think about this year and what we have done is that that was a bold idea exactly around this time last year.

00:03:47: And now it's been going on for half a year.

00:03:50: We opened our first brand experience hub where we managed to give room to our brands and partners to have an experience with and for Zalando just in our building here in Berlin.

00:04:09: And we are right next to the Uber Arena and had a fabulous opening event together with Converse and Teller the Creator where immediately it got sold out.

00:04:20: And this was then a very nice sign that this was not only a wild idea.

00:04:25: and certainly a bold

00:04:26: move

00:04:27: to invest into the space.

00:04:29: But then once it opened the doors, yeah, it got really a nice traction and it did so ever since.

00:04:35: So this was really cool.

00:04:38: And yeah, I think maybe Janneke, we can say from both of us that we love to encourage the listeners to go with their bold moves, right?

00:04:48: Very true, and congrats on launching that brand experience.

00:04:52: It sounds awesome.

00:04:53: I'm sure to check it out.

00:04:55: Yes, that's on the list.

00:04:57: So please, next time you and Berlin around, you certainly come by.

00:05:02: We'll do.

00:05:04: Janika, please be prepared to, in the end, shoot a question for our next guest.

00:05:10: But now, one step after the other, give us a quick overview of what you do at Google and how this is supporting us.

00:05:20: Yeah, I would love to.

00:05:21: So I have to say that there's, fortunately, a very, very close collaboration between the Google team that I lead.

00:05:27: That's a bunch of experts.

00:05:29: who are working super closely with the various teams at ZMS.

00:05:33: And I would say we mainly collaborate in five different ways together.

00:05:38: So our Google specialists support your teams at ZMS and the listeners when it comes to campaign strategy and planning.

00:05:46: So what are maybe some of the YouTube formats you can use in order to build brand reach?

00:05:51: What shopping campaigns can you use in order to drive product sales?

00:05:55: And if you want to have more of a social solution, we have a product.

00:05:58: what we call dimension.

00:06:00: So everything around this, campaign planning and strategy.

00:06:03: Second, we do optimization and execution.

00:06:06: So once you run a campaign, how do we make sure that it's delivering really the best to the best of its capabilities and against your goals?

00:06:15: Third is insights and reporting.

00:06:17: Obviously, you want to know what happened when you ran a campaign.

00:06:21: So what are the campaign results?

00:06:24: But we also provide insights, for instance, on the fashion market so that you have a better understanding of what, from a data perspective, what are some of the things that you can go after.

00:06:34: The fourth area is innovation and development.

00:06:38: We love to hear your input on how we can make our products, our ad solutions, better.

00:06:44: So that's how we collaborate also very, very closely.

00:06:47: But we also look into ways how you can use some of our other products in your day flows.

00:06:53: For instance, we recently hosted a session where we showed how you can use Google's AI called Gemini in order to assist in media planning.

00:07:03: The fifth area is what we call knowledge sharing and training.

00:07:07: It's very much related to the one that I said earlier, but this goes even deeper on how can we share the knowledge that we have on our ad solutions, but also on emerging trends within the ad industries with the ZMS teams.

00:07:22: For instance, Connected TV is a great example explaining what kind of trends do we see, how is usage picking up, and how can you tap into that opportunity.

00:07:33: Wow, yeah, that's already a long list of areas.

00:07:36: So what excites you most about the partnership between ZMS and Google?

00:07:41: And how does it empower our partners differently than before?

00:07:46: Yeah, what I'm most excited about the partnership.

00:07:49: And to be honest, that also stretches beyond ZMS and Google.

00:07:52: It goes all the way to what you referred to as Zaluga.

00:07:55: So the combination of Zalando and Google.

00:07:59: the openness excites me the most.

00:08:01: You are such an incredible partner, very open to collaborate, very open to share feedback and give us suggestions on where we can get better in terms of building better products, but also in terms of how we work together.

00:08:14: So that's what excites me the most.

00:08:16: Apart from that, if we zoom in onto the actual campaigns on what we're doing, I really love the idea of going after and setting up full funnel campaigns, because we see that customer journeys today are not as linear as they used to be, and they're also not as predictable.

00:08:34: And we see that consumers Seamlessly switch between four key behaviors.

00:08:40: They search, they stream, they scroll, and they shop.

00:08:44: And obviously you and your brands want to be present in every of these moments that matter.

00:08:50: And that is able if you run full funnel campaigns.

00:08:53: And that excites me a lot.

00:08:55: The other thing that also drives a lot of excitement for me is how we put AI to work for you.

00:09:01: And you see this, for instance, by running some of our fully powered AI solutions like Dimension or Performance Max, but also look about ways... that you can use AI in your day-to-day work, like the example that I briefly highlighted how you can use Gemini in order to do media planning.

00:09:20: And this really excites me on how people embrace AI solutions and the results that it generates.

00:09:28: We, for instance, saw that we have been able to increase the conversion rate of campaigns significantly with the product that we call Dimension, which is an automated solution that lets you have your ad on the YouTube shorts in Gmail and our display network.

00:09:47: And we've seen that conversions increase by seventeen percent in Q three.

00:09:52: And that I think is a phenomenon.

00:09:53: results and that excites me.

00:09:55: Oh,

00:09:56: that's fantastic.

00:09:57: And we of course also want to talk about something more specific and tangible and thought that the echo campaign we did.

00:10:07: together was a great example, as it was also a big success.

00:10:13: And maybe you can share what made it stand out and what other brands can learn from it.

00:10:19: To me, there were, again, three things that really stood out.

00:10:24: First, what I just mentioned, it was a true full funnel approach.

00:10:28: There was on-site activation on Salando, and there were off-site campaigns on our Google properties, really reaching consumers across across the entire funnel and having a huge scale with that.

00:10:41: The second thing which excited me about that campaign was what we called the seamless creative.

00:10:48: Your creative in-house team generated the creative and they were really geared to the different inventory types on-site and off-site and making them thus very impactful.

00:10:59: And thirdly, we were able to actually measure the impact of the campaign really, really, really well.

00:11:06: We used a tool or a technology that we call brand lift studies.

00:11:10: And that basically means that for a YouTube campaign, you can understand stuff that goes beyond the traditional metrics of clicks or views or general reach and really understand how the campaign influence things like brand awareness, ad recall, purchase consideration and purchase intent.

00:11:30: Wow, that sounds fantastic.

00:11:32: And are there any results you can share?

00:11:36: Fortunately, yes, we're really excited because of the brand lift study that we were able to conduct.

00:11:41: We were actually able to see how many people did the campaign reach.

00:11:46: We actually reached three million unique users, which in our understanding or by our standards is a huge campaign.

00:11:53: And we were able to lift the purchase intent.

00:11:58: by ten percent and again according to our standards we always benchmark campaigns.

00:12:04: this is an extraordinary result really best in class.

00:12:08: and even if you look at something like cost we took a thorough look at the youtube campaign and looked at what was the cost as the cpm and it was four point two euros.

00:12:21: And that was significantly lower than for comparable campaigns.

00:12:27: And that's why we were so excited about the results of that echo campaign.

00:12:31: Yes, I can only second that.

00:12:33: Super cool.

00:12:34: And now I would like to double click on something you mentioned at the beginning, which is connected TV.

00:12:40: So, CTV is officially part of our offering.

00:12:45: How do you see this shaping the future of fashion and lifestyle marketing?

00:12:50: With that, that it's already part of your offering, your once again trailblazing the trend.

00:12:55: And I think that's what's also so unique about Zalander, specifically ZMS, that you're always embracing the things that are out there and really trending.

00:13:05: You mentioned it, connected TV.

00:13:07: If we look at our YouTube statistics, we see that this is hugely popular across age groups and more and more people are using the big screen in their living room in order to watch YouTube videos, no matter if they're shorts, long-form content, or regular length videos.

00:13:29: We recently measured that there are twenty-one million.

00:13:34: connected TV users per month in Germany.

00:13:38: So it's massive and we see that they on average spend nineteen minutes per day watching YouTube content on the connected TV.

00:13:46: So it's a great opportunity in terms of reach but it's also a great opportunity in terms of storytelling because you can really use these high impact visuals on the big screen but you still get the precision.

00:14:00: in terms of measurement.

00:14:02: that comes along with any kind of digital campaign.

00:14:05: And that is a unique combination.

00:14:08: And finally, the thing that I personally really like about... trends where connected to connected TV is that we see that choppable TV is really emerging.

00:14:20: So you not only see on the big screen the video, but for instance, if you see the Echo Show in a Zalando featured commercial, you'll be able to directly purchase it on the big screen via a connection to your mobile app or your mobile phone, for instance.

00:14:35: So it's really, really a great way of connecting and interacting with consumers and telling great stories.

00:14:42: compelling visuals.

00:14:43: A hundred percent agree.

00:14:45: And there are more interesting tools we can leverage, right?

00:14:50: You touched up on demand, gen and performance max in the beginning.

00:14:55: And I wonder what role do these advanced solutions play in elevating partner campaigns?

00:15:02: From my point of view, The thing that makes them unique is that they are fully powered by AI, which means that at the end of the day, the only thing you as a marketer have to do is you have to set a certain goal.

00:15:15: Whether you want to drive consideration, then you would be using Dimension, or you want to drive sales, then you would be using PerformanceMax.

00:15:23: And then the Google AI makes sure that your creatives show up.

00:15:29: across the many properties in the Google universe at exactly the right moment in the right time with the right message in order to drive the best possible result according to the goal that you've set.

00:15:40: And we see that it really works for customers.

00:15:43: I just briefly spoke about Dimansion and how it has been lifting conversion rate.

00:15:48: The same is true for performance max.

00:15:50: On average, we see almost thirty percent.

00:15:54: twenty seven percent to be precise, a higher more conversions compared to regular shopping or search campaigns.

00:16:01: So that's a huge uptake and that's because the AI does its magic and it's much more powerful and steering than campaign and you could ever be manual.

00:16:10: The one thing that has to be noted in order to really maximize the impact of these AI-powered solutions, Dimension and Performance Max, the advertiser has to provide a broad brand of assets in order to show up in these different moments.

00:16:26: So these could be videos, these could be images and text.

00:16:30: And that's why it's so important that your team, the creative team that you have is also heavily involved.

00:16:36: And so far you've been doing a tremendous job in this and providing these creatives to make these.

00:16:43: campaign as effective as they can be.

00:16:45: Super.

00:16:45: Thank you also so much for outlining the interplay between AI but still the human factor in this.

00:16:52: Super cool.

00:16:53: And when you look at the future of offside retail media, what trends do you see emerging in Europe, especially as the US market is usually a step ahead already?

00:17:06: Yes, I would argue the US are probably one and a half to two years ahead of us when it comes to retail media simply because they had a head start in this development and now we're catching up and said the masses at the forefront of this.

00:17:19: I mean, if I look at what's shaping the retail media industry in the United States, I would say it's currently five things that I see very prominently.

00:17:28: Three of them I've already mentioned, so I'm not going to go deep on them.

00:17:32: Those three things is the expansion to the full funnel.

00:17:36: leveraging AI powered solutions and really tapping into the connected TV opportunity.

00:17:43: So these things we've already discussed, so I'm not going to be focusing on them.

00:17:47: The other two are the service model and a measurement.

00:17:52: And let me first speak about measurement.

00:17:55: So traditionally, it's been quite complicated sometimes for retailers to have a really good.

00:18:04: close loop reporting in place to really tell the brand.

00:18:09: this is what happened after you ran the campaign.

00:18:11: This is the product that you bought because especially if a consumer ends up buying multiple products in one go.

00:18:19: But nowadays and set a mess again at the forefront of that, if you're really using conversion based audiences in order to target and to track your activities, you're able to solve this issue and have a real great measurement, a close reporting in place.

00:18:39: And that's really something that's really, really gaining prominence in the United States as well.

00:18:44: The other thing that's at the forefront or a huge change in the United States, that's the move from what we call a managed service of retail media campaigns, where there's a dedicated team on the retailer side, you know, manually running all and inputting all the campaigns to a self-service model.

00:19:03: And self-service basically means that the brands manage and also set up their campaigns individually all on their own through an interface.

00:19:14: The benefit of this is that you can really tackle the long tail of brands, smaller brands with whom you would otherwise not be able to engage.

00:19:24: And so what we see in the US?

00:19:25: that our big retail media houses are having a combination of the two.

00:19:31: They continue to have the managed service for the big brands, for the hero campaigns, and for the brands with whom they have a really close relationship.

00:19:39: And then they offer a self-service model for the long tail of brands in order to capture the entire opportunity that is out there when it comes to retail media.

00:19:48: Fantastic.

00:19:50: And now we've discussed many... different opportunities and if you would summarize the biggest of them for partners in one centers.

00:20:01: So thanks to our collaboration, what would it

00:20:04: be?

00:20:04: For me, it's all about seizing the opportunity.

00:20:07: Don't wait until things get perfect.

00:20:10: Move into offline now, embrace AI.

00:20:12: I know I now cheat it a little bit.

00:20:15: It's not one thing, yeah, because I have full funnel in there or offside and leveraging AI.

00:20:22: But if you want, if you force me to put it into one thing, it's just seating the opportunity.

00:20:27: Don't wait.

00:20:28: I think from waiting, you lose.

00:20:30: And if you move ahead, you always learn and you will get better every single time and get better results.

00:20:36: Oh,

00:20:37: I love that.

00:20:38: And nothing can come after this.

00:20:40: So thank you, Janneke, so much for being our very first media partner inside fashion marketing and sharing some valuable insights.

00:20:49: It's been an absolute pleasure.

00:20:54: As I reflect in the beginning, now it's your time to shoot a question for the next guest without knowing who it will be.

00:21:02: So Janneke, please give me a question that I can ask our next guest.

00:21:06: First of all, thanks again for inviting me.

00:21:08: As I said at the beginning, I feel truly honored and thanks for opening up this podcast for us to be part of it and sharing our voice.

00:21:16: And I also want to say a huge thanks to all of the listeners because the collaboration between our companies from my point of view is really best in class and we appreciate it so much, your openness.

00:21:28: In terms of your question, we've talked a lot about AI and obviously AI as front and center for us here at Google.

00:21:35: So I'd be curious to understand from your next guest and also from you, by the way, Heike, what's the most out-of-box example on how you applied AI in your ways of working?

00:21:46: Wow, that's a good one.

00:21:47: Okay, I certainly will secretly prep for this one to answer then.

00:21:52: And yeah, thank you again also from my side.

00:21:56: I think this is a great testament to our fantastic partnership.

00:22:00: And now thank you also to all of you tuning in.

00:22:03: And if you're looking for more, we've dropped some useful links and show notes of this episode and make sure to check them out.

00:22:10: Also, if you like this episode, please hit subscribe.

00:22:13: And we have more wisdom from top marketeers across partner base in the next episodes.

00:22:19: Ciao for now.