You Have the Data, Now What? Turning First-Party Data Into Retail Media Revenue
Cutting Through the Noise on First‑Party Data
We all hear a lot of ‘noise’ in retail media about the importance and value of first party data… and just as much about the risks and pitfalls. So, it felt worth taking a moment to give it some proper focus.
Why First‑Party Data Gets So Much ‘Air Time’
Let’s start by reminding ourselves why first party data receives so much ‘air time’. At ReAction, we believe your customer data is nothing short of your DNA as a company. That’s a big statement, I know… and of course other things help define you: your brand, your products, your culture. But the purpose of all of it is to attract customers and drive sales. Your customers are your lifeblood!
If, in health and wellbeing, ‘you are what you eat’, then in business, ‘you are your customers’ is not an unreasonable way of looking at it.
If you buy into that thought, then it follows that the more you know about your customers, the better.
Retailers Hold the Richest First‑Party Data
Big brands with big budgets spend huge amounts of time, money and resource trying to build that understanding… through research, panels, modelling and data enrichment programmes. Retailers, however, if they have a loyalty programme, already hold the richest form of first party data that exists. Nothing says more about an individual than their purchase history.
A huge amount of insight can be gleaned or inferred from that data… and often it stretches back years, even decades. The challenge is not the richness of the data, it’s how to use it, and more importantly, how to use it safely.
Customer Experience Must Come First
The other key consideration for any ‘data activator’ is how that data is used to enhance and improve the customer experience… whether that’s online, instore or at home. If that genuinely sits at the heart of the strategy, data activations are far less likely to be challenged by senior stakeholders, your customers, or anybody else.
So, assuming the data has been collected legally, with all appropriate permissions and policies and storage safeguards in place, and that improving customer experience is a primary objective… how does a retailer turn that data into retail media revenue?
How Retailers Can Turn First‑Party Data into Retail Media Revenue
There are a number of ways retailers can do this. Some of the most important are:
1. Powering higher value media inventory and formats
First party data doesn’t just improve performance, it fundamentally increases the value of the media itself.
Whether it’s more relevant sponsored products, personalised onsite placements, or better-timed in-app messaging, data allows retailers to create more effective, more valuable inventory.
Better performing media commands higher prices. Over time, this is what drives sustainable revenue growth.
2. Improving retail media performance through closed-loop measurement
If a retailer can demonstrate advertising effectiveness using real sales and loyalty data, then it stands to reason that brands will invest more.
Closed-loop reporting… linking ad exposure to actual purchase… is one of the most compelling aspects of retail media. It moves the conversation from assumptions and proxies to real outcomes.
We’re increasingly seeing brands prioritise retailers who can offer this level of measurement and targeting.
And when brands can clearly see what works, reinvestment naturally flows.
3. Offering supplier brands the ability to target specific, segmented audiences
Using first party data to segment audiences allows brands to reach highly relevant groups with far greater precision.
This improves the customer experience by making messaging more relevant to them, and it improves campaign performance by increasing return on ad spend.
Once again, better results drive further investment.
4. Providing bespoke insights and reporting to supplier brands
In more advanced markets, retailers are increasingly monetising their data through insight products.
By analysing behavioural and transactional data, retailers can provide brands with detailed reporting on their actual customers… how they shop, how they respond to promotions, how they move between categories.
For brands, this is incredibly valuable. And for retailers, it represents a high-margin, chargeable extension of their retail media offering.
5. Extending audiences beyond the retailer’s own channels
One of the most powerful opportunities lies in enabling brands to reach retail audiences beyond the retailer’s own estate.
Through anonymised data matching and clean room environments, retailers can allow brands to target their customers… and crucially, lookalike audiences… across third party publisher networks.
This shifts the conversation from media buying to audience access, and even audience co-creation… ‘audience-as-a-service’… and that carries a premium.
Imagine being able to offer brands the ability to reach and create bespoke audiences of high-value grocery shoppers across platforms like RTE, Virgin Media or The Irish Times. This opens the door not just to endemic suppliers, but to non-endemic categories such as finance, travel, telecoms and automotive.
For many brands, this is data they simply cannot access elsewhere… and they will pay accordingly.
Why Customer Data Is the True Differentiator
Coming back to the original premise… if ‘you are your customers’, then what truly differentiates one retailer from another is their unique customer base.
That customer base becomes a genuinely monetisable asset.
Brands, both endemic and non-endemic, would give their right arms to access data that rich. And they will pay for it… provided it is used responsibly, intelligently, and in a way that improves customer experience and creates real value for advertisers.
From Cost Centre to Revenue Engine
Retailers need to ensure that their data is collected properly, stored securely, structured sensibly and paired with the right tech stack in a way that enables advanced activation (each of which could be a subject in its own right!)… But if those conditions are in place, their first party data can:
Benefit their advertiser brands enormously
Enhance the customer experience significantly
Generate incremental revenue for the retailer at scale
First party data then transforms from a cost centre into a powerful, scalable and repeatable revenue engine.