Rokt Deploys AI Technology To Power Cinemark’s E-Commerce Payment Page

Rokt, an e-commerce technology company using machine learning and AI to make transactions more relevant to each shopper – it enables companies to drive incremental value from each transaction by unlocking relevant messages at critical moments of decision – is expanding its partnership with Cinemark Holdings to bring new offers to movie theatergoers on the cinema giant’s e-commerce payment page.

Rokt began working with Cinemark in 2022 to enhance the customer experience by presenting highly relevant, non-endemic offers on the confirmation page of its ecommerce booking experience. Now, through the expanded partnership, Cinemark will extend this capability to the payment page, leveraging Rokt’s technology to unlock new opportunities to provide customers with relevant messaging and offers.

“We have about 30,000 clients and a lot of those typically start off in a certain part of the consumer experience that’s in the transaction moment when they’re looking for us to solve a problem around customer relevancy,” said Bruce Buchanan, CEO of Rokt. “As Cinemark’s relationship expanded they’ve asked us to also expand to the payment page.”

Presenting consumers with offers when they’re on Cinemark’s payment page is hitting them at their most engaged moment with the movie theater chain. “Ultimately it’s getting the right message in front of them when they’re highly interactive, when they’re buying. It tends to be a much better experience for the customer and a better outcome for a business like Cinemark because you’re focusing on consumers when they’re most engaged.”

These days, most consumers buy their tickets online, so pretty much anyone that goes to the movies and buysg their tickets from Cinemark is a member of the target audience.

“We’ll work with Cinemark to roll out some new and innovative campaigns,” Buchanan said. “One of the products we are trialing with them is Gift with Purchase. The way advertising has typically worked when you bring partners into an environment, the advertiser will offer you three months free to Apple or a particular brand like Disney or Hulu,” Buchanan said, giving an example of an offer.

“They can use it for internal first-party messaging, like marketing programs, loyalty programs or they might have their own relationship with a financial institution,” Buchanan said. “But it also enables them to partner with anyone else and go more broadly out into advertising. You might be buying your Cinemark purchase and there might be a streaming company or a subscription music provider or some retailer that’s got an interesting product that they think might be relevant to you.

“Because we operate at two points of checkout, we operate on the Cinemark side and the advertising is also a checkout environment as well. What advertisers are doing is now giving additional incentives for the purchase to be completed,” Buchanan added. “It’s another way advertisers can incentivize a behavior. It makes it a bit more contextually relevant for the customer.”

Rokt has been talking about an IPO since at least 2022. Buchanan said the company’s IPO is planned for later next year, but declined to be more specific. “We’re getting closer to that milestone, which is something we’ve been looking at,” he said. “Our real focus is continued execution, continuing to grow the business very rapidly and making sure we’re delivering against our core commitment, so a lot of investing in product, a lot of investing in people, new markets, new geographies and new client segments.”

Over the last two years Rokt acquired Aftersell and last month it purchased Canal, which became the Rokt catalog business. There are more acquisitions in Rokt’s future, but Buchanan declined to discuss them, saying only, “We’re always looking for acquisitions, but we’re still very focused on the core objective. We’re actively looking at anything where we see an opportunity to bring relevancy into the e-commerce transaction.

“Our vision since we started this business 13 years ago hasn’t changed,” he added. “Whenever we see an opportunity where a brand or e-commerce merchant or partner is struggling, we say, ‘How do we make it easier for them.’ A lot of it has to do with extending the network and partnerships, but occasionally we find something like Canal, which is a very innovative company that we think can add a lot of momentum to Rokt clients, and we bring them into the fold. There’s always about three or four that we’re looking at.”