In a world of increased privacy concerns surrounding customer data use, one company has decided to take a new approach to utilize this type of data by asking customers for their permission. Loblaw Companies LTD, Canada’s largest grocer, has created a pilot program where it rewards customers for allowing Loblaw to use their personal data. In this new program, Loblaw will ask members of its PC Optimum loyalty program to agree to become the audience for online ads. Loblaw itself will serve up these ads across the internet based on its customer knowledge. In exchange, those members will get rewards points for each ad they see.
“It could be a banner ad for a shampoo on a news website,” says Uwe Stueckmann, Loblaw’s Senior Vice President of Marketing. “When you see that ad, you’ll get some points. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to buy anything. You don’t have to click on anything.”
Loblaw has previously stated that it would never share this data with third parties. Instead, it plans to use the data as a platform, only selling the right for brands to advertise to segments of its PC Optimum membership likely to buy its products.
Unlike most online advertising that utilizes browsing history, Stueckmann has said that the new campaign is “based on actual people buying real things in real stores—not their intent or not some website they’ve looked at or some other thing.” The plan is for Loblaw to utilize this data to be able to tell advertisers whether people who saw the ads actually changed their habits and bought products at Loblaw’s stores.
“We’re looking at the sum total of all the people in the campaign,” Stueckmann says. “How much dog food they bought before and how much dog food they bought after so that we protect the privacy of the individual consumer.”
Loblaw is already advertising to segments of its PC Optimum membership as they browse online, tailoring the content to their purchase history. The pilot platform is extending that ability to Loblaw’s brand partners—the manufacturers that sell products in Loblaw stores.
“This is happening on the internet all the time anyways, every day, actually every nanosecond,” says Stueckmann, stressing that the program would be easy to opt out of. “If you’ve opted out, I would never serve you an ad. But somebody else will.”