October 25, 2022
Brands
ROAS up to
click-to-sale conversion rate
"Media is a core part of our business and a key element of our path to profitability. Topsort has been a great partner, both on the technical side and in terms of advising our Go-To-Market strategy to bring the product to our CPG partners"
Benedict Counsell, Global VP Retail Media, JOKR GmbH
Quick commerce is a fascinating and challenging business and the macro business environment this year has placed more emphasis on profitability for Q-Commerce startups now more than ever. Amidst them, JOKR is a smart player adopting auction-based advertising infrastructure with Topsort to achieve media monetization. The German startup focused its efforts on the Latin American market by partnering with retail media industry leader Topsort, offering brands an integrated auction-based advertising solution within their platform. The initiative started in May this year and witnessed encouraging adoption from major CPG brands including Unilever, Coca-Cola, and Bimbo.
As the number of successful campaigns on JOKR media rises, CEO Ralf Wenzel said he expects advertising to eventually reach 10% of the total value of the company’s transactions. Here is a deep dive on how they did it and what to expect in the years to come:
Before we jump in, it is crucial to highlight the rise and fall of venture capital availability faced by the tech industry in the last 3 years.
The total funding poured on “e-grocery” companies around the world reached highs of $18.5 billion in 2021 according to a report from AgFunder. This phenomenon was fueled by the unprecedented growth of online commerce brought by the pandemic. Today, as the world breaks out of Covid-19, the strategic approach of sacrificing profitability in exchange for growth adopted by delivery apps is no longer being acknowledged by increasingly demanding investors. As venture capital softens and valuations decline, delivery apps are being forced to search for alternative monetization opportunities in order to survive.
JOKR appears to have uncovered the solution: native advertising as a fast lane to profitability.
JOKR is a global platform for instant grocery and retail delivery at a hyper-local scale. They launched operations in 2021 and expanded across 6 different countries and 15 different cities in the USA & Latin America. Powered by predictive AI, JOKR’s app makes the shopping experience smarter by providing a customized list of products for each user based on past shopping behaviors and delivers them within minutes of purchase.
The company launched JOKR Media earlier in May this year by partnering with ad-tech’s rising star, Topsort. Since then, the incredible success of the first 3 months encouraged JOKR to double down on retail media making it a key component of its global strategy moving forward. With Topsort’s state of the art technology, JOKR is able to offer auction-based advertising solutions to partner brands who are looking to boost their sales by positioning themselves on the app’s premium placements.
Brands can now promote their products with a couple of clicks using autobidding, self-pacing and real-time reporting through a simple campaign management dashboard. Enabled by Topsort’s intuitive product and sophisticated technology, JOKR Media supports both small vendors and big CPG brands alike given that it allows for both a marketplace managed model and a scalable self service dashboard.
During the first rollout phase, JOKR focused its efforts on driving adoption of major CPG brands in the Latin American market by hiring a dedicated team of account managers to run their campaigns. As of November 2022, JOKR media has over 90 active campaigns by more than 40 brands in Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Some of these partner brands include Unilever, Coca-Cola and SCJohnson , who’ve seen ROAS as high as 12x.
In the coming months, JOKR will roll out a plan aimed at large-scale vendor adoption by leveraging the self-service campaign management dashboard offered by Topsort.
This initiative includes training vendors in a series of workshops and webinars organized in collaboration with their ad-tech partner. The plan is aimed at empowering smaller brands to achieve their business objectives, whether that means increasing their conversion rate with sponsored listings or increasing their brand awareness with banner ads.
With a team of expert account managers, Topsort not only provides infrastructure but also stands beside its partners offering dedicated local support during the ramp up. This collaboration results crucial in JOKR’s plans to soon expand to Brazil, Chile and Peru.
What seemed unachievable just a couple of months ago is now a reality: JOKR is achieving a reliable and robust monetization structure that’s bringing them closer to profitability. The company’s ad revenue is expected to reach 10-15% of their gross merchandise value over the next couple of years as partner brands keep diverting budget from traditional channels to JOKR media in return for better results. This trend is likely to increase as it becomes clear that retail media is the solution for advertising in a post-cookie world.
As McKinsey put it, “retail media networks have the potential to generate over $1.3 trillion of enterprise value in the United States by 2026, creating a paradigm shift in digital advertising not seen since the rise of programmatic”.
The clock is ticking and delivery apps that don’t rush to find the key to future profitability will inevitably fall into a competitive disadvantage. Other large players such as Glovo are opting for the same solution instead of wasting time and capital in building it in-house.
Why? It’s simple.
Topsort’s API first approach offers an off-the-shelf integration for speed and ease that allows delivery apps to have a top-notch ad server solution in place delivering great results in less than a month.
What are you waiting for? Get in touch with one of our ad experts.
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