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Cartology to launch enhanced capabilities and services in 2021

Woolworths’ retail media business, Cartology, is looking to bring a suite of new capabilities and talent to the fore in 2021.

As it enters its second year, Cartology has announced enhanced personalisation, audience activation and attribution for its clients.

“We are quite different to other media businesses in that we can show that impact and effect all the way through to sales,” said Cartology managing director, Mike Tyquin.

“We have worked with over 1000 brands in the FMCG space in the past 12 months. We have had a great starting point with a lot of brands, but we are really just getting started, there are many many more that we hope to work with over the next 12 months.”

In the first quarter of next year, Cartology will offer brands additional personalisation opportunities across its digital assets on desktop and mobile, including the Everyday Rewards app.

Tyquin added: “We are expanding beyond the email platforms, to go to whichever platform the customers want to engage on. Brands can now use the Everyday Rewards platform to deliver targeted communications to customers. We know that it is significant, because relevant campaigns drive five times better performance than campaign activity generally.”

According to the Woolworths Group Annual Report 2020 the group experienced record online sales in financial year 2020, totalling $3.5 billion, and achieving an online penetration rate of 5.5%.

“We have seen huge growth in traffic, not just in ecommerce value and volume, but digital engagement broadly,” said Tyquin. “The visits to the Woolworths website are very substantial and increased more than 100% during the peak of COVID.”

In response to COVID Cartology was working with brands to reprioritise their campaigns to be more digitally focused, in particular to help retain any new customers captured via the digital engagement. “As the group has had to ramp up during COVID, we have been lucky to access the build out of that capability,” said Tyquin. “It has been a privilege to be able to work with brand partners to capitalise on that audience growth.”

Other new investments include audience activation under a revised partnership with Quantium, whereby the Woolworths Group’s media activation capability will go back in-house, and an Advanced Attribution product.

“What we are building is a real-time platform that will enable brands to see their campaign in action in real time, including which channels are driving the most impact as the campaign progresses,” said Tyquin. “This will provide a huge amount of transparency and performance information to brands about their campaign activity.”

The product is being developed in partnership with WooliesX, the group’s digital and data division.

Cartology’s Tyquin with one of the business’ in-store screens

“Although these are substantial investments, we feel that the upside for brands is significant,” explained Tyquin. “We know that from the investment we made in the screen network a year ago, we are seeing that provide incredible returns to our clients. For the hundreds of campaigns we have run we are seeing on average 57% new customer growth, and that is from one investment we have made, for one channel.”

The business is also looking to continue it’s recruitment drive, despite a spate of senior hires in recent months, most recently Christiaan Rutten as director of operations. “We are adding to the team, literally by the week, and that is not going to stop,” said Tyquin.

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