Shoppable Advertising Q&A: Amie Owen, Global Chief Growth Officer, Kinesso

“Make everything shoppable, everywhere, all the time.” — Amie Owen, Global Chief Growth Officer, Kinesso

Amie Owen is widely recognized as a shoppable advertising and commerce media expert. She is the Global Chief Growth Officer at Kinesso, an IPG Mediabrands agency that lives by the following credo: “Make everything shoppable, everywhere, all the time.” Advertising Age, Adweek, and Cynopsis have recognized Amie for her shoppable advertising wisdom. She shared some of her expertise with Innovid in the following Q&A. 

Innovid: How do you define commerce marketing and shoppable advertising? 

Amie Owen: We look at commerce marketing as driving a sale, whether it’s online or in-store. It's not just digital; it's also actually at the store. We understand the audience and what they're doing and how they're consuming media. We don’t want to create an extra step. Commerce marketing and shoppable advertising allow us to reach people in different places and spaces without getting in the way of their making a purchase. If you put a QR code on a shelf tab, then you're going to be driving shoppable, or if you're doing something online, whether it be on CTV interacting with your screen or interacting with your mobile phone, there's always a place for shoppable.  

Innovid: Do you think CTV shoppable ads in particular can help brands break through the clutter during the crowded holiday season? 

Yes, I think that’s true. I also believe that when we're looking at our data, there are people who change their media consumption behaviors during the holidays. I live in New York, so I will be biased and talk about the region where it's cold outside during the holidays. People stay indoors. They watch more TV. We see a lot more CTV availability and consumption. The holidays are family time. So what do you do with your family? A lot of people are sitting down to watch a family movie together. That’s where people will be consuming media, and I believe that CTV advertising at that touchpoint can help drive incremental sales.

Innovid: CTV combines traditional awareness advertising with the interactivity of digital. Does placing CTV shoppable ads on the biggest screen in the house give advertisers an advantage? 

If an advertiser uses the TV screen to drive awareness, and there's a shoppability component, commerce is around and available. So if it's something that you could interact with, yes, I consider that commerce, and I think that that could actually break through the clutter. People started shopping differently after COVID, and we saw different behaviors. Things are also changing on a dime, from a technology standpoint, and it's continuing to speed up. That will help drive shoppable via CTV. When you're asking the question — “Are shoppable ads awareness or engagement?” — I think it could be a little bit of both. 

Innovid: Do you believe that CTV shoppable ads can compress the funnel?

I don't believe in the funnel anymore. I believe there's a journey for everybody, and where they are in their journey matters. They could be in an awareness phase in their journey, but that doesn't necessarily mean you need to deliver top-funnel tactics. If you're scrolling on Instagram and you see an iron that you've seen for the fifth time, you're just going to buy it, because you say, “Okay, this is interesting. I keep getting served this ad.” So it depends on what category you're buying. It also depends on your behavior and what media you're consuming. Say you're watching a Halloween movie, and you're being served candy ads while you're watching. Halloween is next week, and you're like, “Oh, wow, I already bought my Halloween candy, and I ate it,” so you can go from an awareness play to “Oh, I should buy this” in an instant. And when you buy it with your remote or your phone, you don't think about it, and it shows up at your door.

Innovid: Have you seen evidence that shoppable ads are outperforming traditional advertising?

It depends on your KPI, but we usually see an incremental lift. And what I mean by that is that usually the KPI of a program is incremental sales. A shoppable ad can drive awareness and revenue. It's not just how many people are actually clicking on an ad that has a shoppable button, because the ad also reaches people who may or may not get to the final destination. We tell our clients to put a shoppable button on almost all of our media — just to give that option to consumers. 

Innovid: What advice do you have for brands starting with shoppable ads? Any broad strategy advice, or any tips and trick tricks on the ad itself? 

There are two pieces to making great shoppable ads. The first piece is just test — test everything. Test and have a measurement and learning plan in place to see what works best for your brands. The second piece of shoppable advice is, don't just buy the inventory and not think of all the other pieces. At Kinesso, we talk about total commerce. We're not just talking about the technology arm, we're talking about what media you're actually driving. Are you retail-ready in the sense that you have all the details — the assortment, the stock — in place? 

Innovid: Have you seen vertical sectors that are more successful than others, or is shoppable going to work across the board, no matter what industry you’re in? 

Right now, there's a lot of fashion and beauty that are trying it, because it also ties with AI. It's more of a natural, in-real-life experience, where you could actually try something on, or try the makeup, see what it looks like via AI. I'm also seeing opportunities for insurance or financial or credit cards. It's not necessarily directly shoppable, but it’s about giving people the resources to actually engage — to sign up for a quote or to apply for a card or whatever it may be. There are a lot of use cases for it. I would say that the global low-hanging fruit is those non-endemic brands, because they don't necessarily think about the performance angle, because you can make it shoppable within the awareness. Using shoppable functionality, you just ask the consumer not to buy but to sign up. It’s giving them a number of ways to enter into the buying journey. 

Innovid: Do you see shoppable and live sports on streaming being a good combination?

From a personal standpoint, I think so. I'll just give you my family as an example. My husband really loves football, and I'll watch it with him. And I really like shopping, so there's definitely a tie between live sports and shopping based on the audience themselves. The other thing that's super interesting during live sports on streaming, there's the “L” treatment on the screen while the actual game is taking place that you could use to deliver a message or engagement there. There definitely is a use case there. 

Innovid: How do you measure the impact of shoppable advertising? 

Oftentimes, there's an uphill battle and a challenge to get that data. And if you can get that data, you have to harmonize it, because it's all the data and it's not media attributed. That's the next step and iteration of shoppable tech. If it's going to be shoppable, then we really should be able to measure it through to purchase. Right now, we're measuring engagement. It’s really important to build the measurement piece. Just because someone clicked, doesn't mean they actually bought it, right?

Innovid: What's the next big thing in shoppable that's not on people's radar yet? 

I’m looking at two different changes. One is to picture yourself watching a TV show, and you hit the pause button. I just watched “Emily in Paris” last night. So I paused the show to see the fancy outfit Emily was wearing. With the shoppable of the future, the technology will actually tell you where you could buy that outfit. The interactivity and the automation of shoppable is super interesting. I'm even hearing from some providers that you could actually turn on that feature or turn off the feature. So it's almost like an opt-in. The second piece of shoppable’s future is product placement or integration inside streaming. It’s almost like a QVC approach. We already have a few media partners coming to us and saying, “Hey, we're creating this show. Do you want to actually have a product integration that is shoppable?” So basically, they would talk about the product, or they would showcase the product within the actual format, you could actually buy it then and there.

Innovid: How was shoppable different five years ago, and how will it be different five years from now? 

Five years ago, Instacart was around, but people were just starting to catch on to groceries delivered to their houses. And after COVID, at least in my household (focus group of one!), we barely go to the grocery store. We are getting our groceries dropped off weekly. How do you actually engage with that person? It's a new way of buying. It's not necessarily replacing how people shop, but it's another way to reach them. And so that channel, last-mile delivery, with DoorDash and Uber Eats, didn't exist five years ago. Five years from now, there will be a lot of automation. So is your refrigerator going to order when your milk is low? Yeah, probably. There's also a washing machine that knows how many loads you've done. In the future, there will be fewer of us actually doing the work, unless it's an impulse buy. It's going to be more of our machines or our technology talking to each other to do the work for us. 

Learn more about the power of shoppable advertising. Download our new guide, Holiday Shoppable Advertising Unwrapped, today.

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