Topsort, a four-year-old advertising technology startup, has announced three innovative ad products designed to streamline retail media advertising. The new tools were revealed at the company’s inaugural Topsort Developer Day conference in Palo Alto, California.
The products include Toppie, a sponsored listing-focused ad exchange that allows advertisers to purchase ads across multiple retail media networks simultaneously. This addresses a significant logistical challenge in the industry by providing a unified platform for buying sponsored listing ads for the same SKUs across various networks. For instance, electronics brand LG successfully sold out its regional inventory through Toppie and had to pause its campaign temporarily until restocking.
The second product, Top Optimizer, is a suite of measurement tools powered by machine learning technology. It enhances the performance and reliability of onsite ads for commerce media networks. By integrating AI capabilities with retailers’ or ecommerce companies’ ad platforms, Top Optimizer manages tasks such as pacing, prediction, and live forecasting. It also sets up automated messaging to alert relevant parties of changes in metrics, bringing scientific precision to ad business operations.
The third innovation, In-Store Journey, is a tool that digitizes anonymized data collected through Bluetooth-connected beacons already installed in many physical stores. This data is then processed through an AI model and combined with other signals like digital ads or sales data to provide insights into how shoppers interact with products in-store. This capability could help retailers gain a competitive edge against major players like Amazon by leveraging first-party in-store data.
Topsort’s CEO, Regina Ye, emphasized that these tools aim to address fundamental questions about the future and implications of technology in retail media. The company’s CTO, Francisco Larrain, noted that In-Store Journey exemplifies Topsort’s commitment to enabling retailers to challenge big tech’s dominance using industry-best technology.
The Topsort Developer Day event featured a keynote from Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin Roth and included panels on retail media tech, product and measurement standardization, and AI. Companies such as Kevel, Google, Skai, Nvidia, Albertsons, and DoorDash were represented onstage, highlighting the industry’s interest in Topsort’s innovations.
