‘Seven in 10 millennials stream TV while eating a takeaway, yet you can’t add a movie to a takeaway order’

Retail media advertising is set to grow significantly over the next five years and Dublin-based ad-tech start-up Zenbundle is aiming to capture a piece of the action by providing big brands with a seamless way of cross-selling products and services through partnerships with complementary retailers.

Underpinning Zenbundle’s quest for market share is a clever piece of technology that recognises what a consumer is buying online and offers them relevant add-ons at a special price. For example, someone browsing for a TV may be offered a discounted streaming service at the same time. The special offer is redeemed within the main purchase with a simple click, and Zenbundle and the retailer make money when an ad converts to a sale.

“Our platform intelligently embeds contextual brand ads and offers into relevant consumer journeys and this enables brands to reach their audiences at pivotal purchasing moments,” says company co-founder Shane Fay, who is no stranger to the interlinked worlds of consumer technology and driving growth through retail channels, having spent more than 20 years with companies such as iQon Technologies and Sky. Fay’s co-founder in the business is Giacomo Trudu, a software engineer with a decade’s experience in developing complex web applications and third-party API integrations within fast-scaling start-ups. The pair met while participating in the New Frontiers entrepreneurship programme at TU Dublin’s Blanchardstown campus, and established Zenbundle in 2022.

“Having worked both with retailers and on partnerships with global brands I could see they were having a growing problem reaching their customers due to a fundamental shift in digital marketing caused by Apple iOS privacy changes, GDPR regulation and third-party cookies being banned from browsers. This has made large-scale retail commerce channels, and retail advertising which markets products and services to consumers at or near the point of purchase, an increasingly attractive way for brands to reach their audiences,” says Fay. While retailers and consumer brands often already had these channels in place, they were not being optimised as there was no cross-fertilisation with other brands, he adds.

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“Seven in 10 millennials stream TV while eating a takeaway yet you can’t add a movie, or a box set, to a takeaway order. There are over 30,000 flights in Europe every day, yet you can’t easily sign up to a magazine or entertainment subscription while you wait to board,” Fay says. “We saw this as a gap in the market waiting for a solution that taps into consumer interests as they browse but also provides brands with measurement and real time information about people’s shopping behaviour. The ads people see are based on anonymised user event data such as the product someone is looking at and what’s in their basket.”

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Zenbundle launched its prototype last December and its Beta app and API followed in May. The company has been income-generating almost since the get-go and the main investment has been time rather than money as the founders handled the prototype and web application development themselves. The New Frontiers programme provided a small stipend and the company has also been approved for €100,000 in support from the Enterprise Ireland pre-seed start fund. Zenbundle will begin hiring for commercial and technical roles in September.

“Retail advertising is fast becoming one of the main ways in which brands can interact with potential customers, and while it currently trails digital outdoor and TV in the advertising pecking order, this is about to change,” Fay says. “Retail media is expected to be worth over $170 billion globally by 2027, surpassing social media expenditure by 2025 and total TV media spend by 2028, and we are very keen to be part of this evolution. For now we are focused on Ireland, but our target clients and potential partners are multinational brands, so our ambitions are global.”