by Didi Rankovic at Reclaim the Net
Costco, which ranks among the three largest retailers in the US (and globally), is joining the club of big corporations with access to massive amounts of customer data, who are launching various schemes to monetize that data.
Costco’s plan, still in the testing phase, is to develop a way to target ads at customers both on its website and in stores. The numbers are staggering and draw from the retailer’s loyalty program: the shopping behavior of people in 75.5 million households. And – a membership card is a requirement for anyone shopping at Costco.
The promise of access to shopping habits inevitably includes past purchases and the corporation’s Assistant Vice President of Retail Media Mark Williamson also promised future partners that they will be able to not only target ads (“reach”) members of the Costco loyalty program, but also, “reach the right members in the right context based on past behavior.”
Costco’s effort to keep up with the trends in both retail and ad industries is evident in the fact that Williamson’s job was only created last September.
The race to start using customer data for advertising…
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