Ryvalmedia Pulse (Vol.36)

Retail Media will continue to grow

We are beginning to see a significant shift in advertising spending after both Woolworths and Coles saw more than 25% YoY revenue growth across their respective retail media networks. Driven by the desire to be closer to the shoppers point-of-purchase and leveraging advertising opportunities in a post-cookie world, analysts are predicting retail media spend will see a 40% increase in spend from budgets that are otherwise flighted for traditional channels of radio, print and television by 2027. While Woolworths and Coles currently dominate the local market with their rich retail media network, an increased appetite from advertisers of tapping into the instore point of purchase as well as the appetite to leverage retail 1st party data to get closer to the consumer, will continue to see other retailers develop their own media networks and cash in on a rapidly growing medium.

Apple launches Vision Pro in the US

After being revealed during WWDC in 2023, Apple’s Vision Pro headset has now launched in the US to much fanfare. With ‘natural control’ hand and eye tracking as well as voice commands, it is considered a ‘leap forward’ in the AR and VR space with Apple’s product set to go head to head with Meta's Quest 3. With limited app availability and scale in the market, the AR/VR space is still in its infancy with many believing the headset ‘won’t hit its stride until its fourth iteration’. From an advertising perspective however, a convergence in technology is coming where current AR/VR activations like this CGI OOH campaign from Maybelline or these Snapchat AR activations will become even more immersive in headset technology. The New Economy demands that we must ‘Stay Ahead of the Trends’, so experimenting with these activations now will pay dividends in the future.

How Gemini will change Google Search

This year, Google plans to integrate its AI engine, Gemini (formerly BARD), into its most used and loved product, Search. Not only will it revolutionise how a user interacts with search from now on, but it will also change the way in which ads are served and shake up the SEO industry.  Gemini has been built for multimodality, meaning its able to understand text, images, audio and code. Therefore, its reasonable to assume that building ads will become a thing of the past and hyper-personalisation is the way forward. Many predict that when Gemini is introduced businesses will likely see a drop in their organic traffic, where the superior ‘helpfulness’ of the engine shortens the average number of searches required. However, it will create a new battleground for the next generation of SEO as links will be part of the content curated by Gemini creating a potentially new avenue of traffic. Whilst the exact rollout date is not yet known, its important to consider these changes over the coming months so your business is not caught off-guard.

The Ryvalmedia Pulse is prepared fortnightly by Alex Pupko (Strategy Executive).