Lowe’s Media Network eyes incrementality amid marketer budget pressures

To better compete and take in more ad dollars, Lowe’s Media Network has incrementality on the roadmap. Digiday recently caught up with John Storms, general manager and head of Lowe’s Media Network, to get details on the measurement plan going forward and how the retailer is navigating economic headwinds.

The Lowe’s executive has overseen the media network since 2023, guiding it through a rebrand last year where it was renamed Lowe’s Media Network instead of Lowe’s One Roof Media Network. Before Lowe’s, Storms spent 19 years at Target, serving as director of hardlines (products like appliances, sporting equipment, electronics, and home goods) strategy and sales at Roundel from 2019 to 2022, according to his LinkedIn.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

The retail media landscape is pretty packed right now — more than 250 RMNs and counting. What’s on Lowe’s product road map to scoop up ad dollars?

The most important starting point is self-service campaign(s), real-time metrics and then results — giving our brands the opportunity to really have that at their fingertips. That’s coming the second half of this year. Self-service is a hot topic.

That’s hopeful, but there’s economic uncertainty that a lot of brands are navigating right now. Is Lowe’s offering any flexibility in media buying, joint business plans and partnerships (JBPs) and the like?

In an environment where things are changing, what you planned four months ago is changing, we do have those frequent touch points. We are truly trying to change as the business evolves.

We’re closely monitoring the situation when it comes to just the environment that we’re in. What we want to do in terms of media planning is just making sure that we’re continuing to protect customer value. We have item reviews. We have media plan reviews and a number of checks throughout the process. In a lot of ways, our practices haven’t changed. It’s just realizing that there’s probably going to be a few more checks and balances in there, and ensuring that we’re not disappointing that customer.

Back to the product road map. How is Lowe’s addressing incrementality? For marketers, ROAS doesn’t seem to be cutting it anymore.

Incrementality is on our road map and ultimately will be a metric that, as we refine our methodology, approach, will be part of our self-service engine. The biggest thing we’re trying to solve is: How are we measuring incrementality for a product vertical that has a significantly longer buying time? Coming from Target, my past life in a mass retailer, it was very easy to think about the incrementality of cereal, a product that you’re buying on a weekly or biweekly basis. Thinking about incrementality on a flooring project, where it might take months to make that decision, or appliances where you’re looking at a life cycle that can be 10 years, what we’re really trying to understand is what’s the right approach for incrementality. How do we think about incrementality versus lifetime value or project time value, from that point of inspiration to buying that maybe months later?

Say more. What do those conversations with brands look like?

We’re continuing to partner with industry standard partners, when it comes to IAB [Interactive Advertising Bureau], MRC [Media Rating Council]. What we’re doing is a precursor to that ‚ really starting to look at how we can get more granular on some of the data, in terms of how our customers are changing their behaviors with different creative types, different channel types. How are we bringing new customers into the category? How are we thinking about the rest of the basket?

What we’re leading up to is having this portfolio of metrics that are helping us in addition to ultimately getting to incremental, that are inferring what types of behaviors are we truly driving with the media versus what a customer would have gone on and done already. 

How do you build out a team to meet the moment in the retail media gold rush?

We expanded our team coming into this year. We’re continuing to expand. Our goal is to continue to expand and, and increase our levels of service. We want every brand to feel like they’ve got a more of a dedicated point of contact and dedicated team across client services, media planning, creative and insight. There’s elements of our business where we’re looking for more seasoned retail media talent. We’ve brought a lot of team members from other retailers, and who got that experience and can really work with the biggest brands and some of the most integrated agencies around what their needs are. As we stand up some of our go-to-market and our teams that are focusing on bringing new channels to life, we’re really looking for talent that has innate curiosity, is leading digital first, understands the customer journey and has an understanding of the product and channel stack.