Horizon AI platform aims to standardize retail media measurement

As retail media networks proliferate, so too have the needs for measuring their performance. But despite some efforts to create a standardized framework, the industry isn’t there yet. In and effort to fill that void, Night Market, Horizon Media’s commerce affiliate, is expanding its Neon artificial intelligence platform into a software-as-a-service (SAAS) format that will standardize measurement and reporting across retail networks. While it comes from a media agency, the tool is being marketed outside of Horizon’s client base, much as Publicis Groupe has done with its Profitero ecommerce analytics business and CitrusAD retail media platform. See Ad Age’s Tech Power List honoring marketing leaders Retail media networks report measures such as return on ad spending (ROAS) to clients in different ways. For example, they have different “look-back periods,” i.e. they vary in how long a period they measure brand sales as a basis for comparison before retail ads ran, which can affect the ad impact that’s reported, said Armand Hershowitz, senior VP of go-to-market sales for Night Market. Retailer reports may not properly account for incremental sales from retail media spending, because they don’t uniformly account for underlying sales that would have occurred regardless of such spending, said Geoff Gross, VP of product for Neon. The Night Market platform connects to any retail media network, he said, “whether we have an [application program interface] integration or you just give us a log in, we’re pulling your own data.” Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Neon also aims to help marketers overcome the most common analytical error of retail media analytics—last touch attribution, where the retail network gets all the credit for a sale because it was the last thing a shopper encountered before buying. The Hershey Co. is an early client, along with others in food, home care, beauty and over-the-counter drugs, Hershowitz said. Neon uses AI and marketing-mix modeling techniques to arrive at multi-touch attribution, so brand marketers can evaluate the contribution the full range of media and marketing efforts make and account for non-marketing influences on sales, Gross said, but much faster than the turnaround time of several months for conventional models.

Horizon AI platform aims to standardize retail media measurement

Featured Stories