Ji Kim is Founder & CEO of DiJiPOP, a digital shopper marketing company.
AdExchanger.com: What problem is DiJiPOP solving? And, please define “digital shelf space.”
JK:We help retailers and brands better merchandise and increase sales by applying in-store shopper marketing practices to their online and mobile stores- where consumer go first when they start shopping.
We are fixing the marketing spend for retailers and their vendor partners. 75% of all shoppers start at retail web sites, yet very few dollars are allocated to these digital shelves. For retailers offering these solutions, we give them the tools to scale these programs through automation.
We define digital shelf space as the real estate on any retailer published information that’s viewed on a digital display or web connected device. Like shelf space in the physical store, the web allows us to automate and manipulate what we push to these digital shelves and how we present it – in real time with the ability to track and optimize based on sales.
Our core target is the top 100 online retailers and the big box retailers looking to build digital compliments to their circular advertising opportunities. In the future there will be long tail opportunities with the smaller online retailers. Further, as mobile and digital displays entrench the physical stores, that opens up far greater opportunities.
And the competitive set?
I bucket them into two segments: platforms/technology solutions like us and ad network/rep firms like Triad Digital Services.
- Platform solutions like us allow retailers to build and control their own digital shelf monetization program. We give these retailers a single tool to build scalable programs that automate the entire process, including selling, invoicing, reporting, managing, editing, and even real time bidding to push specific SKUs to the digital shelf. Players in this space include us (DiJiPOP), Hook Logic, and Intent Media. We built our solution with retailers in mind whereas the others were built for travel sites. We’re building a solution for a major big box retailer and learning more everyday about how to make it work with the other channels. Further, we have some secret sauce that makes our solution superior.
- The ad network/rep based solutions like Triad, Rich Relevance, and Searchandise want to own your inventory and sell it to brands and agencies. Their execution ranges from banner ads to manipulated product sort. They want a high margin for this incremental advertising dollars they sell. I spent 12 years in the ad network space and think that it’s a quick way to add a few million to a retailers business but not the best solution for retailers who want to sell product.
Is there a media component? Are you cookie-ing and retargeting customers on behalf your client through display exchanges, for example?
We view the digital shelf as media. Not now but we will have the ability to do so if the retailer wants this in the short term. These are things we consider and could easily implement via strategic partnerships with a handful of partners.
What is the biggest misconception eCommerce publishers have as it relates to Dijipop’s area of focus? -And brands?
Retailers think advertising is a bad word. They also think we are trying to steal their money. Some think they have all of these capabilities in house. Most have pieces but not an end to end solution that can scale. We want to help retailers build scalable digital shopper marketing programs that complement their circular offering and can help them maximize their partner marketing dollars.
Brands think we’re doing the same thing as the others in the space. The executions are all different. Most solutions available to brands are sold like banner buys. Buy it and I’ll send you a report. Google’s the leader in search because it’s on demand. We want to be the google for ecommerce/shopper media.
A year from now, what milestones would you like Dijipop to have accomplished?
We want to have dozens of the nation’s leading retailers using our solution, to help them and their brands sell more products online and in store.
We want to be the leading digital shelf monetization platform for retailers. We want to lead by having better merchandising where the consumer now starts shopping – retail web sites and mobile.
We want to be the leading web/mobile digital shelf monetization solution for retailers. The most advertising dollars managed by our platform, period.
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