The Background

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As the popularity of online shopping grows, ad spend online has also surged, especially in digital retail media.

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What exactly is retail media? Retail media is marketing to consumers at or near the point of purchase, or at the point of choice between competing brands or products. In the traditional retail world, brands buy up digital displays to increase their share of shelf but in the digital world, the search results and the platform itself becomes the shelf in the store.  

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Many sellers, especially those managing shops on marketplaces like Shopee, Tokopedia and Lazada, have actually been actively investing in retail media without realising it because it’s commonly known as in-platform advertising and/or ecommerce marketing.

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Types of retail marketing include in-store advertising - think MyAds, Sponsored Products, etc. - online advertising like in-platform banners and ad pop-ups, sampling, loyalty points and/or vouchers.

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The Problem

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Since 2020, marketplaces across the world have raced to add basic in-platform advertising capabilities to capture the demand for retail media but due to the fragmentation of the ecommerce landscape in emerging markets, ad optimisation and overall ecommerce operations at scale is difficult for sellers.

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Imagine setting up, optimising and analysing ads for hundreds of SKUs on different promotions for a single campaign. Now multiply the work across campaigns, marketplaces, and countries. The scale required to operate ecommerce is enormous and even the best resourced teams feel strain - this is the ecommerce execution gap.

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The Solution

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‍Epsilo was built to solve the complexity of selling across multiple marketplaces for online sellers. Since 2020, our SaaS solution has been used by the top brands in the world to optimise their advertising on top marketplaces like Shopee and Lazada to close the gap.

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Reckitt, P&G, L’Oréal and Unilever were among a group of quick retail media adopters who realised the benefits of in-platform versus out-platform spend and have been with us from the beginning. The average return on ad spend generated across six ASEAN markets over the last two years for our first movers was an average of 27.15X, as some shops saw 6X ROAS all the way to 140X depending on the online portfolio. Ads GMV grow +2553% as over $15M in ad revenue flowed through Epsilo software.  

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How was this possible? It was possible because our users’ required sophisticated but easy to use tools and this feedback resulted in a set of key features unique to Epsilo software and our team:
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1. ‍Automation of manual tasks: through #Rules, sellers and/or ad operators can turn on and off ads based on triggers such as SKU stock availability, CPC, budget limits
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2. ‍Unification of data: ads across marketplaces are managed under #OneDashboard and metrics can be customised and extracted in a report layout defined by a seller’s business goals
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3. ‍#Collaboration across departments: multiple #Users across ecommerce, finance, supply and agencies can track actions and approve budgets at one single source of truth ‍
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4. Managed Services: our team of retail media success managers ensure campaigns are running smoothly, ad spending is on track and dive into post-campaign performance analysis.

Learn how we helped the world's second largest phone maker increase ads GMV by 6X in two months.

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This is only the beginning. In 2021, Epsilo celebrated its second birthday and we can’t wait to generate more success for online sellers of all sizes across new markets in the new year! We’re happy to share more, contact us to learn how Epsilo can maximise your ad spend on top marketplaces.

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Image credit: Issac Smith