Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW) has partnered with Epsilon to launch a self-service retail media network for footwear and accessory brands, per details shared with Marketing Dive. The offering, Front Row Connection, is powered by Epsilon Retail Media and comes as the retail media network space continues to evolve and mature.

“In the past, retail media has been really centric around grocery and big box,” said Adam Skinner, managing director of global unified retail media at Epsilon. “This is a new area for retail media to be able to drive new categories [with] relevancy, style and personalization — key retail media tactics and strategies.”

Front Row Connection looks to put brands on the digital shelf of DSW’s website to help them connect with consumers and grow loyalty. The network offers high-impact placements like sponsored product ads and banners — table stakes for retail media networks — and is designed for both consumer discoverability and marketing performance.

“Front Row Connection gives our brand partners smarter, more direct access to the customers they care about most,” said Mike Donk, senior vice president for digital at DSW. “It’s designed to make discovery easier for shoppers and deliver measurable results for advertisers—whether they’re promoting new arrivals or perennial best-sellers.”

To meet marketer needs, the media network applies artificial intelligence-powered identity resolution to connect brands with shoppers and utilizes omnichannel attribution to connect performance to consumers — without cookies or proxies. Marketers continue to turn to omnichannel measurement that solves for fragmentation and AI to addresses identity resolution in an increasingly data-driven ad world in which Epsilon and parent company Publicis are key players.

“Epsilon has been grounded and centric in AI for the better part of two decades. It is the foundation of all of our tech,” Skinner said. “What we tell brands and retailers around AI is it's there to provide efficiencies.”

Retail media evolves

Retail media networks continue to evolve and mature as ad spend in the channel increases. U.S. retail media ad spending is forecast to top $62 billion this year and approach $100 billion by 2028, per eMarketer. While major retailers like Walmart and Target and grocers including Kroger and Albertsons have staked out claims to the space for years, more niche offerings continue to emerge in a landscape that some have described more widely as commerce media.

“DSW and other retailers that are in this different category to grocery and big box are seeing the opportunity to be able to handle the tier-one [brands] at the top, but then also create a catered self-service option that allows for those smaller brands to be able to get in and compete head on with a retail media offering with those tier ones,” Skinner said.

Offerings like Front Row Connection are also attractive to brands that want to utilize retail media to drive performance, but require self-service tools rather than paying for managed services. As media channels continue to fragment, retail media network providers are increasingly looking to harmonize their on-site and off-site assets, as well as their media tactics across those channels.

“[DSW] had a really, really good on-site asset, but as we all know, that asset is only as good as the traffic that's been driven to it. They wanted to solve how they could get better validated reach and pull that into their owned and operated [channels],” Skinner explained.

The use of an identity backbone powered by Epsilon allows DSW to help advertisers on Front Row Connection connect to unique people, finding potential customers on the open web and driving them back to their owned and operated channels for conversion. The use of AI helps to refine the process of finding the right customer at the right time on the right device in the right context (and avoid negative ad experiences — like being served the same ads, even after purchase — that plague consumers).

The roll out of Front Row Connection also comes as DSW reintroduces itself as a source of consumer joy through a brand platform focused on the in-store experience. Bringing digital and in-person shopping together is a tide that lifts both boats. 

“Their biggest and greatest asset is their brick-and-mortar stores. You can’t go to Amazon and walk into a store and browse for a pair of shoes,” Skinner said of DSW. “When it comes to going up against some of these online-only retailers, this allows for them to go for that full omnichannel harmonization and provide that data-driven way of reaching high-value customers.”