Founded in 2018, with its focus on in-store advertising automation technology, Doohlabs’ investment round includes investments from private investors, a business development loan from Business Finland, and financial support from the Centre for Economic Development (ELY). The private investors selected Doohlabs among the ten most promising start-up companies within FiBAN’s New Nordic Leads-program.
”It was great to see how our vision of retail media business transformation and the new technology we developed, resonated with many different parties. With this growth funding, we will accelerate our international expansion and take the technology to global markets where retail players are many times larger than in the Nordic countries. It feels great to be taking Finnish technology pioneering overseas”, says Janne Lohvansuu, the CEO of Doohlabs.
A 100 billion dollar opportunity for retail
Retail media solutions provide a new, profitable business for retail looking for new revenue streams facing the pressure from low-margin e-commerce competitors. Boston Consulting Group has identified the retail media revolution as a 100 billion dollar opportunity for retailers.
The digitalisation inside retail stores has been slow compared to the development online. The strong growth of retail media has triggered a need for targeting technology used online to be applied to digital screens in a physical environment. Being able to reach consumers with the right message where a purchasing decision is made, is attractive to retailers, suppliers, and advertisers alike. Retail is also a pre-eminent player in its ability to measure the effectiveness of advertising in terms of actual sales.
In-store advertising automation is just taking its first steps. Despite the forerunners, monetising of in-store audiences is often only at the planning stage and market has not yet been shared. Kroger, Target, and Walmart, among others, are leading the way in how advertising automation can take a significant share of advertisers' multimillion-dollar budgets.
The value of retailers’ customer data increases as the usage of third-party cookies decreases
The retail business has a significant opportunity to grow its media business, by monetising its audiences to brands, suppliers, partners, and advertisers based on deep customer insight. Tightening privacy standards regulating the use of online cookies will make retailers first party customer data more important than ever before. Doohlabs technology enables using this data for algorithm-driven advertising targeting and programmatic sales of in-store digital screens.
“Reaching audiences in brick-and-mortar will be just like in Facebook. We believe that in the future, the retail business will be measured not only by the traditional means but also by the media value of the store. Every place with an audience holds a media value, and this business potential is often untapped”, reminds Lohvansuu.
For more information, please contact:
Janne Lohvansuu
CEO
Doohlabs
+35850 566 3850
Doohlabs is a marketing technology company offering an in-store retail media platform for targeted advertising and programmatic media sales. The platform enables the usage of digital signage as commercial media in brick-and-mortar stores, utilising retailer’s customer insight.
