PromoteIQ, bought by Microsoft in 2019, is a retail media platform that provides targeted sponsored listings with a simple, tag-based ad integration.
PromoteIQ stands out because of their flexibility with ad relationships, allowing companies to manage direct deals and approve vendors before they appear on one’s site/app. PromoteIQ’s tag-based system, however, limits ad unit customization and targeting control, a downside for many companies who want more ownership of their retail media platform.
This article presents PromoteIQ’s main competitors and offers alternate retail media solutions.
Kevel offers a suite of ad APIs that publishers use to build their own retail media ad platforms, complete with native ads, sponsored listings, DOOH ads, and more.
Kevel excels over PromoteIQ because of its flexibility and customization. Though PromoteIQ enables retail media monetization and direct ad relationships, it limits how much control publishers have over ad unit and targeting features. Kevel’s infrastructure APIs, however, provide many more controls around ad unit customization, targeting, and pricing models.
Kevel’s customers include Klarna, Bed Bath and Beyond, Lyst, Slickdeals, Ticketmaster, Yelp, and more.
Like PromoteIQ, CitrusAd’s platform is retail-specific. CitrusAd has a broad network of advertisers for a plug-and-play solution, offering simple integration for sponsored products, banner ads, and email ads.
CitrusAd might not work for you if you’re looking for more customization. And without direct advertiser relationships, you risk off-brand ads and lost revenue.
Criteo has built the largest sponsored products ad network, making it easy for e-retailers to dip their toes into sponsored listings.
Like PromoteIQ, Criteo’s solution is mainly tag-based, resulting in ad blocking, page speed, and the potential for malware attacks.
With over 90% market share, GAM’s publisher-side ad server towers over competitors.
GAM's' inherent problems, however, prove problematic for retailers.
Indeed, GAM is not a retail media solution and only relevant if serving standard banner ads, not sponsored listings.
Standard ad servers supply tag-based banner ads and do not work well for retail media. The list includes Adbutler, Adform, AdGlare, AdSpeed, EPOM, Revive, Smart Ad Server, UpRival, and Zedo.
The other option is to build the retail media platform yourself. Such a project could take 10-20+ engineers and a few years. On the other hand, retail companies like Walmart and Amazon have driven billions from their homegrown solutions.
While this approach may provide full flexibility, it pulls resources from other projects and delays your new solution for at least a year.
Here’s an overview of the pros and cons of building an ad server from scratch.
If you’re looking for an alternative to PromoteIQ, we’d love to chat about the pros and cons of Kevel over PromoteIQ. You can reach out to us here.