Shopping Cart Ads Goal of Microsoft Partnership

Published: January 16, 2008

by Alex Woodie

Fifty years ago, leading technologists predicted that, by now, moving sidewalks would have alleviated the American consumer from the burden of using our limbs to move from point A to point B. That prognostication turned out to be a tad premature, but now, Microsoft and two partners are making another bold prophecy, one that may finally find a good use for that pesky new radio frequency identification (RFID) technology: alerting us, via ads streamed to screens mounted on shopping carts, of a two-for-one sale on Double-Stuff Oreos on aisle eight.

OK, maybe the location-aware ad streaming in the nation's grocery stores doesn't represent the pinnacle of technology the way moving sidewalks would have. But it's still pushing the envelope and (potentially) finding a way to improve the day-to-day activities of millions of consumers.

This week at the National Retail Federation convention in New York City, Microsoft announced a partnership with MediaCart Holdings of Texas and an East Coast grocery store chain, Wakefern Food, to develop an interactive console that will mount on a grocery cart and display advertisements, among other capabilities.

A prototype device was already tested during a nine-month pilot program last year, and now Wakefern, which runs the 200-strong chain of ShopRite stores in the Mid-Atlantic, expects to start installing the consoles during the second half of the year.

The MediaCart system will provide a more customized shopping experience, in addition to streaming ads down to shoppers. It will allow customers to log onto the ShopRite Web site at home, where they'll enter their shopping lists (customers will need loyalty cards). When they get to the store, the shoppers swipe their cards on the MediaCart system, where their lists will appear on the displays.

Then, as the shoppers push their carts around the store (using their legs, because we don't have moving sidewalks yet) and pick items off the shelves, they scan the items' barcodes using their MediaCarts' scanners, which allows the devices to check items off their lists. The shoppers can also use the devices to find other items, compare prices, look up nutritional information and recipes, and to expedite the check-out process.

Along the way, RFID chips embedded in the devices will track the location of the shoppers in the store, enabling the store to beam advertisements for products that are nearby or that the store thinks the consumers might want to consume (based on their shopping history logged by the loyalty program).

Microsoft's role in all this is providing the technology to serve the ads. This will come from its Atlas Division, which sells the ad-serving technology Microsoft obtained with its $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive last year.

It's all part of a brave, new world of digital advertising, according to Scott Ferris, general manager of the advertiser and publisher solutions group at Microsoft. "Digital advertising opportunities are expanding rapidly into new areas, as many of consumers' daily activities, such as shopping, become increasingly connected," he says.

Of course, there's still one daily activity that has yet to be fully exploited for synergistic digital cross-domain advertising: walking. Maybe Microsoft will realize this incredible opportunity one of these days, and finally give us our moving sidewalks.

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