Particular Audience launches Trade Media solution to bring trade marketing into the digital age

New offering enables brands to launch, measure and adjust supplier-funded promotions in real time – bringing digital flexibility to trade marketing

AI-powered retail media personalisation platform Particular Audience has launched its Trade Media solution, which brings the flexibility, measurability and control of digital media to online supplier-funded promotions.

Trade marketing has traditionally required brands to commit promotional budgets to campaigns well in advance, with fixed discounts and limited ability to change or measure campaigns once they are live. PA’s Trade Media solution allows brands and retailers to launch tactical promotions instantly, measure their impact, and adjust campaign parameters in response to customer behaviour, competitor activity or external factors such as the weather.

The solution also allows brands to use their trade marketing budgets more precisely. Rather than applying a blanket discount to a product or product range, Trade Media can identify the discount required to beat a competitor’s price and apply only what is needed to secure the sale. A PC brand, for example, could set a rule to apply a 2.5% discount to a specific SKU, increasing the discount only if a competing product with the same specification is priced lower.

By dynamically determining the level of discount required, Trade Media can reduce the margin given up on each sale while still using supplier-funded promotions to drive conversion. This means a brand or retailer does not have to give away 10% when 2.5% will do. 

Trade Media builds on Particular Audience’s Price Beat module, launched in 2021 and used by leading multi-brand retailers around the world. Price Beat carries out a live competitive price scan on the product page, applying the discount necessary to beat the best competing price. Where the retailer is already offering the lowest price, it can instead tell the customer that they are already getting the best available deal.

In specific cases, Price Beat increased conversions by over 300% when a discount was applied to beat a competing price, and by more than 80% when the retailer confirmed that its price was already the lowest.

“Trade marketing, pricing and promotions are still stuck in the ‘90s, in terms of how they are administered and delivered,” said Particular Audience Founder and CEO, James Taylor. “It’s opaque, there’s no targeting, no flexibility, barely any measurement, and brands are stuck with these huge upfront commitments. They don’t even know what outcomes, if any, they are driving. 

“Our Trade Media solution changes that. Think of it as supplier-funded or co-funded pricing and promotions, bought and operated with the control and accountability of media. It’s not a new reason for brands to fund discounts, but a more controlled, measurable way to deploy the funding they already use.”

Trade Media is now available exclusively as a managed service from Particular Audience. 

Source: Particular Audience

  AI, James Taylor, Particular Audience, Retail Media, Trade Media