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Grocery Retail Media Networks Are Evolving – Here’s How And Why


When seemingly every industry builds its own version of a retail media network (RMN), grocery chains excel with unique shopper data and insight into actual consumer buying behavior.

These are people who are ready to spend, said Bobby Gibbs, director of retail and consumer goods at consultancy Oliver Wyman.

“That helps increase the appeal [to advertisers] compared to a more general platform,” he said.

Meanwhile, grocery stores operate on slim margins and are always looking for ways to increase profits without raising prices. Consumer pressure to raise prices has peaked in the past few years as inflation has soared.

Grocery chains therefore understand the value of their customer data and the potential of retail media.

RMN’s revenue is expected to reach $129.9 billion in the U.S. alone by 2028, according to the Mars United Retail Media Report Card, accounting for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. media spending by then. According to estimates by Grocery Doppio, a food research firm, last year specifically, grocery retail media should have reached $8.5 billion.

There is no button to easily sell media

In many ways, the rise of retail media networks represents an evolution of the established relationship between grocery chains and advertisers.

But now, grocery chains are offering a growing range of digital advertising and out-of-home opportunities, from in-store audio to in-app ads that can be targeted directly at consumers who often buy a competitor’s brand.

Yet there is no button to easily sell media, either for advertisers or for retailers themselves.

For example, although large chains typically have the resources to invest in their own in-house technology, it can be difficult for ad buyers to reach niche audiences through smaller chains with their nascent offerings.

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Overall, however, the grocery retail media network is becoming more sophisticated.

The appeal and potential of food NMR

Grocery consumers are loyal and consistent, often shopping twice a week. Their behavior is easy to understand and does not fluctuate significantly based on trends, as for example fashion does. Grocery consumers visit a store or open a grocery chain’s app with the intention of making a purchase.

By working with grocery chains, “we have access to first-party data,” said Andy Howard, senior director of trade media at Publicis-owned Mars United Commerce. “We can really focus on who is buying and who is then actually buying.”

Retail media networks use this data, including location data, shopping behavior and demographics, to help advertisers reach consumers and match them with results.

RMNs are putting more information “in the hands of consumers to make informed decisions,” said Deborah Weinswig, CEO of Coresight Research, a retail and technology research and advisory firm. “The consumer wins, the retailer wins and the brand wins because the brand then has more data insights about what caused the conversion.”

And by working with RMN on groceries, Weinswig said, brands can also begin to answer the age-old question: “What does it take for a consumer to change their shopping habits?”

RMN Foods goes the way of partnershipRMN Foods goes the way of partnership

However, in this rapidly evolving space, brands and advertisers can have very different experiences depending on their retail technology partner.

A robust grocery retail media network – think Kroger Precision MarketingHy-Vee RedMedia, Target’s Roundel or Albertsons Media Collective – includes a variety of advertising options across apps, web, out-of-home screens and in-store. These can be combined with more traditional methods such as end caps or retail displays.

While larger chains typically offer these options directly to advertisers, others grocery chains, often smaller or more regional, have partnered with retailers to support their RMN.

Save Mart, for example, a grocery chain with locations mostly in California, partners with Quad and Swiftly for its RMN.

Swiftly, which primarily works with small and medium-sized chains – discount store Save A Lot is another example – is a retail media technology platform. And Quad, which also mostly works with small and regional chains (save for Save Mart is Oklahoma-based Homeland Stores), focuses on in-store digital ad assets.

In-store shopping is still an important part of grocery shopping, said Kevin Bridgewater, vice president of strategic retail solutions at Quad. “The [in-store] audiences are really important to get brands excited.”

Quad’s technology helps personalize ads at Save Mart stores in California based on factors such as the weather, Bridgewater said. For example, Save Mart has locations in the Bay Area, where it’s cold, foggy, and 50 degrees in the summer, and also operates stores 60 miles away in Modesto, where it’s 110 at the same time of year.

“Being able to promote ready-to-eat soups in the Bay Area and something that’s a little bit refreshing in Modesto is critical,” Bridgewater said. “The technology we have allows us to head down into the store and down the aisle if needed.”

Cooperation and focus on standardization

Meanwhile, there are grocery chains pooling their resourcesamong others through initiatives such as Rippl, which is a retail data co-op operated by Cardlytics-owned Bridg.

Giant Eagle, a regional chain with many locations in the Mid-Atlantic, joined Ripple last year.

Scale is something advertisers demand, said Joell Robinson, Giant Eagle’s senior director of retail media. And Robinson would know that. She spent years in the paid media and digital advertising space, including as director of digital marketing at JPW Industries, which owns a portfolio of metalworking brands, before joining Giant Eagle in 2022.

“Planners and buyers are asking for an easier way to buy, and I understand that from that background – it’s already fragmented,” she said.

Online grocery shopping app: full grocery bag and receipt on smartphone screenRobinson predicts that more chains will merge in the future, and this consolidation will make it easier for advertisers to work with smaller chains.

Even grocery chains large enough to get regular space on the media schedule are trying to work with other chains to standardize the space.

Kristi ArgylanWHO recently left her job as SVP of retail media at Albertsons Media Collective to lead Uber’s advertising businesswe often hear from brands that the ‘complexity’ of grocery retail media is ‘too hard for them to navigate’.

“You can imagine how many staff CPG could potentially add to run a unique campaign from each of us — it’s just not sustainable,” she said. “Standardization is really meant to do a lot of extra work.”

Albertsons is working with the IAB to establish standards for grocery RMN, and Argyilan plans to continue promoting retail and commercial media standards in his new role at Uber.

RMN with food is growing

Grocery chains are also looking to make it easier for advertisers to partner with them by using programmatic, personalization and generative AI to optimize campaigns.

Another area for growth in the space is non-endemic advertising. If a shopper is buying diapers, for example, there’s a good chance they’ll also be in the market for baby products that the chain doesn’t carry, such as baby clothes.

There are even opportunities for of grocery chains on connected TV. Argyilan believes grocery retail media has an opportunity to “really bring some order to that channel.”

While some obstacles clearly remain for food RMN, many advertisers are paying off, especially with new opportunities on the horizon.



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