The BVDW is uniting the retail media industry

Retail media marketing is gaining momentum

Retail media is one of the hottest topics in the digital advertising world right now. The relatively new media discipline is one of the most innovative and fastest-growing advertising concepts and is evolving into its very own media category.

The experts are expecting great things from it: IAB Europe predicts that the retail media volume will exceed TV ad spending by 2026, while the retail media ecosystem in the DACH region is also shaping up to be extremely dynamic, given that the trend monitor published by the Specialist Group of Online Media Agencies (FOMA), which is part of the German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW), forecasts an investment growth in Germany of 27 percent in 2023 compared to last year.

The BVDW is significantly contributing to this rapid development by organizing various committees and formats to actively help shape the dynamic path of retail media in Germany.

The BVDW’s Retail Media Circle and Initiative

The BVDW successfully kicked off its commitment to this topic at the Retail Media Summit held at DMEXCO 2022. A lot has happened since then: in December 2022, the Retail Media Circle (RMC) specialist group was formed – the first lobby to represent the interests of big retail companies with regard to their digital advertising activities. The RMC is chaired by Patricia Grundmann, Vice President Retail Media and Managing Director at OBI First Media Group. She is supported by Torsten Ahlers, Managing Director of MediaMarktSaturn Marketing Services, Martin Schwager, Chief Operating Officer at notebooksbilliger.de, and Robert Jozic, Managing Director of Schwarz Media, all acting as deputies.

In addition to the RMC, the BVDW’s Retail Media Initiative has been bringing together key market players from across the entire retail media ecosystem since the start of 2023. This initiative is headed by Ingrid Hochwind, EMEA Product Lead Retail Media at Google, Florian Reinartz, Chief Commercial Officer at Bonial, and Moritz Hoffmann, Managing Director of Retail Media at the “pilot” agency.

“Forming the RMC was our first big milestone in actively driving the development of retail media in Germany. Due to the understandably high demand from BVDW members and non-members, we’ll be further expanding the initiative over the course of the year to ensure that we incorporate and represent every perspective along the entire value chain in the long term. After all, one thing’s for sure: retail media is here to stay, and all market players need to work together to accomplish the industry’s ambitious goals,” explains BVDW Vice President Corinna Hohenleitner.

Standardizing retail media is the goal

With the support of its committees, the BVDW is therefore well on its way to establishing retail media as an integral part of the media portfolio, while at the same time giving the market, which is currently still very fragmented, more security and guidance. The first projects include harmonizing the varying definitions of retail media and standardizing formats, bidding/pricing structures, and KPIs in order to ensure uniform measurement of the advertising impact and create a transparent retail media product portfolio that is easy for everyone to understand. The BVDW also plans to compile a market overview that tangibly presents the structure of the extensive retail media ecosystem.

Thomas Duhr, Vice President of the BVDW: “By involving all relevant national and international market partners early on in the process, we’re adopting an all-hands-on approach to take retail media to the next level toward becoming its very own media category – always with an eye to its analog aspects and cross-media nature.”

All things considered, it will be interesting to see how retail media develops in 2023 and beyond. In this respect, the BVDW is fulfilling its responsibility by actively helping shape the future of this advertising concept together with its members. And at DMEXCO 2023, retail media will take center stage again.