Retail Media Network for an important, underserved market
WESTERN UNION | RETAIL
The challenge
The Western Union team set out to achieve an ambitious goal: raising awareness of their offering and leveraging digital [display] to drive more traffic inside their locations, and at retail partner channel within grocery and pharmacy – with their check-cashing services.
The client team also challenged us to help monetize the digital signage investment to deliver incremental revenue through advertising. This was the impetus to establish retail media network that’s dedicated to hitting a special audience of the "the unbanked” which is an underserved / unmet need.
The solution
This allowed Western Union to build a bona fide retail media network – and then take the network to the adverting community eager to get in front of this audience, as well as to third-party retail partners in need of ways to drive revenue and footfall. The deployment was fully funded by Western Union – with an eventual goal to take the solution globally with a single retail solution, to reach 400,000 locations worldwide.
The solution is truly end to end, bringing hardware, software, content, and advertising together in a bespoke in-window digital merchandising form factor:
- Double sided all-in-one display featuring Samsung high bright and indoor product
- Bright Sign media player – 1:1 ratio
- Adjustable mounts that accommodate front window floor to ceiling with great simple/aesthetic
- Portable cellular connectivity for data
- ReflectView AdLogic CMS platform to deliver Programmatic advertising
- Content scheduling, RMS, Day 2 support – all delivered by Creative Realities in-house teams
Western Union team is on point to sell the network and deliver advertiser engagement. We’re looking to deploy between 1,400 – 5,000 screens in 2024, and we continue to work to create custom feature enhancement with Reflect AdLogic platform and integration with new DSP/SSP interfaces like Vistar.
The results
Western Union is looking to measure impressions, traffic, and incremental revenue from advertising to offset the investment of the digital signage – in a way that can amortize the cost for both the retail outlet and brand, and to expand to new retail outlets and categories. They are also doing customer segmentation analysis to track who is utilizing their services, where they are sending money to – so they can get a better evaluation of their audience to help for advertisers.