In an interview with TechGraph, Girish Ramachandra, Co-Founder & CEO of Shopalyst spoke about the innovative approach of Shopalyst’s Discovery Commerce platform and how it employs data and AI to curate non-disruptive and relevant advertising experiences for users.
Read the complete interview:
TechGraph: Can you tell us about Shopalyst’s commerce advertising approach? How does your platform help brands connect with consumers meaningfully?
Girish Ramachandra: Through the Shopalyst Discovery Commerce platform, we help the world’s best brands connect media and commerce in a very seamless way for digital consumers to help meet their branding and performance objectives. This way brands’ consumers get a delightful product discovery, brand discovery, and purchasing experience when they shop online.
TechGraph: How do you ensure that your platform’s advertising is relevant and non-intrusive for users?
Girish Ramachandra: Leveraging data and AI, Shopalyst helps brands understand the context of a campaign, and identifies the most relevant audience to reach out to.
Further, by making the brand’s catalogue discoverable at the Impression level – the Ads we build are by nature friendly for shoppers to learn more about the brand at the same time discover related products.
Finally, personalized and native storefronts seamlessly blend the content, user experience, and choices of retailers to shop by providing a non-disruptive way to promote products.
TechGraph: How do you measure advertising campaigns’ success? What metrics do you use to evaluate performance?
Girish Ramachandra: Shopalyst offers a cutting-edge AI-powered toolkit that empowers marketers to achieve superior returns on their digital advertising investments. Our platform assists brands in assessing the effectiveness of their campaigns when utilizing Shopalyst, taking into account various factors such as campaign objectives, target audience, ad placement, and optimization strategies. Key performance indicators for evaluating success encompass the impact on CPM/CTR, which reflects Shopalyst’s valuable contribution through refined targeting.
Additionally, we gauge the impact on CPC/CTR, where Shopalyst makes a difference by enhancing user engagement with product-aware creatives. Furthermore, we analyze the impact on CPA/CR, as Shopalyst plays a vital role in improving the post-click shopping journey, ultimately enhancing the overall success of advertising campaigns.
TechGraph: What kind of data and insights do you provide to Shopalyst brands? How do you help them make informed decisions about their advertising strategies?
Girish Ramachandra: In addition to full-funnel reporting of traditional campaign metrics like CPM, CPC, CTR, and ROAS, we also measure the impact of their ad spending by tracking Brand Share of Shelf, Share of Search, and Share of voice across popular media and commerce platforms.
TechGraph: With the rise of social media and influencer marketing, how do you see the landscape of commerce advertising changing? How is Shopalyst adapting to these changes?
Girish Ramachandra: With the digital advent, consumers are always on mode. These set of consumers are omnipresent, they’re on social media platforms, video platforms, influencer networks, etc. It’s not enough for brands to build a website with beautiful content and expect consumers to come.
It is now becoming increasingly important to take the brand commerce experience to where people are and make it easy for them to learn more about the products and purchase them with minimal friction.
This ability to take a brand’s commerce experience where people are is what Shopalyst’s ‘Discovery Commerce’ is all about. As a result of that, Consumers get a delightful product Discovery, brand discovery, and purchasing experience when they shop online.
TechGraph: What opportunities do you see for brands to leverage commerce advertising on Shopalyst? How can they differentiate themselves and stand out from the competition?
Girish Ramachandra: Brands can maximize their advertising potential through Shopalyst’s commerce advertising solutions. Firstly, they can efficiently target high-intent audiences who are actively shopping within the brand’s category on popular media platforms.
Secondly, Shopalyst empowers brands to enhance their existing ad formats with product-aware creatives, effectively turning advertisements into brand storefronts. This transformation not only fosters increased click-through rates (CTR) but also elevates user engagement.
Lastly, Shopalyst connects brand ads to a brand-managed destination that offers relevant content and a friction-free path to purchase. This not only ensures a more seamless and satisfying consumer experience but also enables brands to gather valuable 1P data from engaged shoppers, refining their marketing strategies.
TechGraph: Can you share any examples of successful commerce advertising campaigns on Shopalyst? What made them effective and how did they resonate with consumers?
Girish Ramachandra: More than 500 marquee brands in 30 countries trust Shopalyst to drive better ROI on their digital media spends. The attachment below provides you with an example of how a leading brand achieved success by leveraging the Shopalyst platform.