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Unrivalled scale: how the Tesco Media & Insight Platform delivers incredible reach for brands

Reach is important to advertisers in just about every sector. To consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketing teams and their agencies, however, it’s nothing short of critical. When the success of a product hinges on getting as many eyes on it as possible, CPG marketers need to reach as many customers as they can in the most cost-effective way. As always, that means making smart choices about where to advertise.

Retail media is one of the world’s fastest-growing advertising mediums, but not all retail media is alike. While many retail ad platforms can offer scale, not all of them can offer the right kind of scale. A website might draw the eyes of millions, after all, but if it’s not one that customers actually use to do their grocery shopping, that doesn’t necessarily make it a great place to promote fast-moving product.

Among the many advantages offered by the Tesco Media & Insight Platform, one of the most important to CPG advertisers is that of its reach. More specifically, the Platform helps brand advertisers connect with a vast number of customers, right when they’re in the process of shopping for groceries. In a very real sense, it gives them the ability to help shape what Britain buys through a combination of scale and precision.

Let’s take a look at four key ways in which the Tesco Media & Insight Platform offers genuinely unrivalled scale.

• Tesco is the UK’s market leader for grocery
  

  27.1%[1] – that’s Tesco’s share of “physical” grocery in the UK, making it the market leader by some way. In fact, Tesco has almost double the market share of its closest competitor (14.9%), and more than the third and fourth largest retailers in the country combined (13.7% and 8.8% respectively). What’s more, that market share hasn’t dropped below 26% at any point in the past decade.

  Clearly, this has significant implications in regards to reach. With world-leading data science behind it, the Tesco Media & Insight Platform is invaluable in terms of helping brands and agencies find the right customers for their marketing goals. The sheer number of shoppers that venture through Tesco’s doors, however, also make it the perfect place to engage the nation as a whole.

  As could be expected, this kind of scale translates into a significant commercial opportunity too. 77% of UK households shop at Tesco[2], and more than 40m transactions take place across the Tesco estate every week, meaning that there are countless opportunities for brands to get their products into customer baskets.

• Clubcard data offers in-depth insights at scale
  

  Launched in 1995, the Tesco Clubcard was the UK’s very first supermarket loyalty programme. In the near three decades since, the Clubcard has gone on to become a mainstay of the Tesco world, delivering great value to customers via a wide range of offers and incentives. The recent introduction of Clubcard Prices in-store and online has only helped to enhance that value.

  Shoppers aren’t the only ones to benefit from the Clubcard, however. With more than 20m cardholders and 80% penetration in large-format stores, the Clubcard also provides a gigantic – and incredibly rich – source of insight into the needs and behaviours of Tesco customers. Combined with dunnhumby’s data science, that makes for a powerful source of intelligence for brands and agencies to draw from.

  There’s one other consideration here, too, and that’s the fact that Clubcard provides the UK’s largest source of first-party behavioural data. With the deprecation of cookies in Google’s Chrome browser drawing ever closer, that will only make Clubcard data even more useful for those brands and agencies looking to enhance their understanding of their audiences.

• Tesco leads the way in online grocery, too
  

  It isn’t just physical stores where Tesco can provide access to shoppers at scale. With more people than ever now buying their groceries online, the age of the omnichannel shopper is here – meaning that brands now need to engage consistently with customers regardless of whether they’re buying in-person or digitally.

  With a 37.5%[3] share of the UK online grocery market, Tesco now processes more than 1.2m online orders every week[4]. What’s more, online sales grew by more than 8% in the first quarter of 2023[5] , meaning that tesco.com and the Tesco Grocery & Clubcard app now attract a bigger audience than ever before.

  As is the case with our physical stores, that gives advertisers an increasingly effective way to reach their most relevant customers.

• An extensive range of media channels that run from sofa to store
  

  Reach is an important quality for any media platform. At the same time, reach counts for little if you can’t also give advertisers the ability to communicate with their audience effectively. Today, with opportunities to influence shoppers in-store, online, and even away from the grocery environment altogether, a successful retail media platform also needs an assortment of different engagement tools.

  The approach behind the Tesco Media & Insight Platform is one that we describe as “sofa to store”. Whether a customer is browsing the aisles in one of our 2,800 stores, browsing tesco.com, or even browsing their favourite social media channels, we give advertisers compelling ways to engage with them.

  Some of those are time-tested, traditional media channels like Point-of-Sale, Sampling & Experiential Events, and Onsite Display Advertising. Others are new and emerging applications, like Scan as you Shop and Sponsored Products. Whichever category they fall into though, each is united by being data-driven, insights-led, and additive to the customer experience.

From our innovative and ever-growing portfolio of media opportunities to the sheer number of customers that come to us for their groceries every week, the Tesco Media & Insight Platform delivers a truly unprecedented opportunity; one that combines unrivalled reach with the insights needed to help advertisers get the most from their media spend.

Find out how the Tesco Media & Insight Platform can help you Shape What Britain Buys. Get in touch now.

[1] Great Britain Grocery Market Share (12 weeks ending) – Kantar World Panel, 12th June 2023
[2] TW15 2020 to TW15 2021
[3] UK online market share based on Kantar Total Till Roll online channel on 12 week rolling basis to 14 May 2023
[4] Tesco plc Interim Results 2021/22
[5] https://www.tescoplc.com/1q-trading-statement-202324/