Zalando Media Solutions has successfully tested in-store ads

Zalando has quietly tested brand advertising at its own platform during the past few months. With a group of several brands, it ran 30 advertising campaigns from external brands on dedicated parts of its own online store and via third party sites.

Jérôme Cochet, Senior Vice President Sales at Zalando, told German online magazine Horizont all about this project. With the company’s new advertising initiative, Zalando Media Solutions, the German fashion retailer thinks it can capitalize on the 97 percent of its traffic that don’t convert.

‘Very attractive proposition for brands’
Last year, Zalando said they see themselves no longer as just an online retailer, but more as a tech platform for fashion. In this context, Zalando Media Solutions plays an important part as it allows them to connect brands with consumers. “With a pan-European reach of 130 million visits per month and a mobile share of 60 percent, we have a very attractive proposition”, Cochet says. “But we use not only our own website, we also use third parties such as Vogue and Instagram.”

Also trying to reach non-fashion consumers
When asked whether Zalando is unnecessarily limiting itself in the capitalization of its reach when it’s focusing solely on fashion in its advertising marketing, Cochet says fashion is of course its starting point. “But the technical possibly of our platform go so far that we will certainly attempt to find non-fashion customers, for example from the beauty & lifestyle or fast-moving consumer goods industries.”

Online stores dedicating a part of their website to third party advertisers is something we are seeing more recently. Media Markt has opened up its webshop to advertising in Germany and the Netherlands. While in the latter country, retailers Otto, Ahold, Praxis and Makro are doing something similar.