The Home Depot Boosts Sponsored Products Strategy with Pentaleap

Crealytics, not to be confused with creatine (💪), is a performance advertising firm offering services ranging from ad measurement to consulting. They also “had” a retail media business, which was spun out in late 2023 to better capitalize on the RMN opportunity.

The spun-off division, Pentaleap—not to be confused with the amazing acapella group Pentatonix—provides technology for both sides of the retail media ecosystem. For RMNs themselves, they offer a Publisher Manager portal, which includes an ad server, SSP, and yield management technology. The goal is to help RMNs tap into multiple demand sources. They also offer a Campaign Manager for RMN advertisers. 

With that context out of the way, earlier this week, Pentaleap announced it’s working with The Home Depot’s retail media network, Orange Apron Media, to improve its on-site Sponsored Products ad strategy. According to the company’s announcement, Orange Media is tapping into Pentaleap’s “Fluid Relevancy Engine”—essentially an algorithm—to evaluate contextual data on The Home Depot’s website. This helps position Sponsored Product ads in a way that feels more organic and relevant to on-site visitors.

Why This Matters:

Sponsored Product ads are a massive opportunity for retail media networks, according to Pentaleap. A few months ago, the company shared a full report highlighting the value of these ads and breaking down who was leading the pack in the first half of 2024. Unsurprisingly, according to Pentaleap, “Amazon and Walmart lead the way in coverage, showing sponsored products for nearly every search term, while others miss out on 30-50% of searches.”

Pentaleap’s value proposition is that RMNs are not fully meeting the opportunity with Sponsored Product ads. Their tech enhances the relevance of Sponsored Product ads on RMN sites, improving decisioning and positioning to better meet demand and display the most effective ads.

Among its users are, of course, The Home Depot but also Staples. “We achieved a breakthrough where our Sponsored Products matched the performance of organic products, helping us increase the paid click volume,” says Matt Clark, Chief Digital Officer at Staples about the Pentaleap relationship. 

Experts React:

Melanie Babcock, VP of Orange Apron Media and Monetization at The Home Depot, was also vocal about the value of the partnership: “We are excited to partner with Pentaleap to boost the performance of sponsored products, bringing the right suppliers closer to the customers and the point of purchase,” she said, in the announcement press release. 

Our Take:

As the retail media landscape expands, there will be a growing number of tools and solutions emerging to help RMNs optimize their inventory and improve issues like decision-making, addressability on-site, and third-party measurement. Pentaleap is an example of a company capitalizing on that market demand. Given that sponsored products generate 75% of Amazon’s ad revenue, other retailers aiming to compete in the RMN space will try to optimize and expand their Sponsored Product business.