Ulta Beauty partners with Meta for retail ad network measurement

Ulta Beauty is expanding the reach of its retail media network and providing more insight into ad performance on Meta-owned social properties.

Initially launched in May 2022, the beauty giant’s UB Media network is designed to offer its brand partners addressable advertising leveraging its Ultamate Rewards loyalty members. UB Media builds upon the company’s existing Digital Marketing Partner Program with the goal of creating more iterative opportunities for brand partners to reach its customers with targeted promotions.

At launch, the network offered advertising access via offsite display, videos, social and influencer media, and onsite sponsored products. It has since offered onsite display inventory on Ulta Beauty-owned properties. The retailer intends to supplement this suite of ad formats with additional formats in the future.

Brand partners using UB Media have access to closed-loop campaign-level reporting, including audience and creative insights. In addition, Ulta is now showing brands targeting customers on Meta social properties (such as Facebook and Instagram) via UB Media detailed performance metrics.

In a Meta corporate blog post, Brent Rosso, VP of UB Media, said that the retailer is leveraging tools such as Meta Advanced Analytics to help advertisers understand how social awareness can help drive in-store purchases.

According to Rosso, by bringing data from the Ultamate Rewards program into Meta’s secure measurement environment, Ulta can prove that purchases happened after seeing an ad on Facebook or Instagram.

“With UB Media we’re able to offer beauty brands opportunities to advertise with us on Meta’s platforms and for the first time we’re now able to show them that online awareness is driving meaningful outcomes in-store,” Rosso said in the blog post. “Providing our partners with true omnichannel marketing and measurement is a unique differentiator for UB Media."

“This marks the first of hopefully many ways we are looking to partner with Meta to continue to bring omnichannel value to our business and to our brand partners,” Ross said.

Ulta Beauty operates more than 1,300 retail stores across all 50 U.S. states and also distributes its products through its website.