Kroger and Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) announced an expanded partnership with Pinterest that enable advertisers to leverage the supermarket chain’s first-party data for targeting ads on the social platform and closed-loop measurement to track from digital inspiration to purchase, according to a news release.

Pinterest is a destination for many consumers looking for inspiration related to fashion, food and home-related topics. The KPM partnership with Pinterest will give brands the chance to better target these audiences at various stages in their product discovery and purchasing process by leveraging Kroger’s consumer data.

Faced with competition from Amazon and its growing ad business, retailers, like Kroger, Walmart and Target, are leveraging their vast amounts of consumer data, including their shopping habits and purchasing history, to attract advertisers with the promise of targeting their most relevant audiences. Kroger hopes to generate $400 million in additional profits by 2020 and sees its marketing unit KPM as playing a key role in that goal, since it places digital ads for companies like Unilever and General Mills, according to Bloomberg.

Pinterest has been rolling out new features to bring more advertisers to the platform and connect with its more than 250 million monthly users — mostly women, but fathers are a growing user group — with 78% saying brands’ content on the platform is useful to them, according to data from the company. Pinterest made its content marketing API available to third-party influencer marketing platforms, giving marketers and influencers the ability to collaborate more effectively.

Source: www.grocerydive.com