13/6/23, 14:54 Snowflake Is Building a Marketplace for Retail Media Data

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Data giant Snowflake is building a marketplace for retail

media data
Ryan Joe Jun 12, 2023, 6:00 AM CLT

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Affinity's Damian Garbaccio and Snowflake's Rosemary DeAragon. Affinity Solutions; Snowflake

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Data giant Snowflake is building a marketplace for retail media data.
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Investing in retail media is "one of the biggest initiatives within Snowflake," an exec
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13/6/23, 14:54 Snowflake Is Building a Marketplace for Retail Media Data

Data giant Snowflake is building a marketplace for retail media data as it tries to grab a
bigger piece of the $80 billion retail media market.

To do this, Snowflake has struck a partnership with data company Affinity Solutions.
Affinity works with financial institutions to offer discounts — like Chase cardmembers
getting 10% off at Starbucks. It collects the data about what people buy, and sells it to
companies to help them target ads. That data is now available directly through
Snowflake's platform.

Investing in retail media is a top priority for Snowflake, said Rosemary DeAragon, the
company's global head of retail and CPG. "It is one of the biggest strategic initiatives
within Snowflake," she said. She added that Snowflake is looking to add more data
providers to its marketplace.

Previously, Snowflake clients could access retail data via companies like IRI and
Nielsen, but the partnership with Affinity is different. Affinity's retail data set is built
directly into Snowflake's platform, so companies need fewer tools and processes to get
the data.

"That's music to an IT team's ears," said Myles Younger, head of innovation and insights
at the ad consultancy U of Digital, speaking generally about the industry and not about
Snowflake specifically.

Affinity's retail data looks into purchase activity across a wide range of retailers, said its
chief business and marketing officer Damian Garbaccio. "Home Depot won't see what
Lowe's and Ace Hardware is doing, but we will," he said.

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Walmart, for instance, can target customers who've shopped at Home Depot, but
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Snowflake has been aggressively partnering to bolster its retail media capabilities. It
also H
works
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13/6/23, 14:54 Snowflake Is Building a Marketplace for Retail Media Data

in a household to target with ads. And it has deep connection with media-buying
platforms like The Trade Desk, which recently made its own retail media splash, so
Snowflake users can send out the ads.

There's sharp competition in the ad industry to grab as much retail media share as
possible, while the market is still relatively nascent. Morgan Stanley recently singled
out Criteo and The Trade Desk as the biggest advertising technology winners in the
space, besides Amazon. But Snowflake's bet to grab a slice of the growing retail media
pie isn't based on competing with other adtech companies. Instead, it wants to be the
engine that powers all of them, said DeAragon. 

"We're already helping retailers like 84.51, which is Kroger's data science arm, build out
their media strategy and share out that data using Snowflake," said DeAragon. 

This data sharing often happens in so-called clean rooms, which are secure portals
where two companies can share insights about their respective customers while
maintaining strict controls over what is shared. While tech giants like Amazon and
Google have their own clean room offerings, they don't field a retail media data
marketplace.

"The big walled garden clean rooms won't have that," said Shiv Gupta, founder of U of
Digital, speaking generally about the ad industry and not about Snowflake. "Amazon
definitely doesn't have that. They have their own data, but not other retailer data in
there." He added that it's unlikely they'll ever house data from other retailers because
retailers view Amazon as competition.

Amazon confirmed it does not offer data from other retailers.

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