To keep the industry updated between the periodic editions of our Retail Media Report Card, Mars United monitors the efforts at leading retailers and platforms around the globe to improve and expand their capabilities and services. We focus on the initiatives that are expected to impact the way advertisers effectively plan, execute, and measure their marketing programs on these networks, either directly through new behind-the-scenes tools and capabilities, or indirectly through new engagement opportunities that will enhance (or at least alter) the way they interact with shoppers.
The Retail Media Report Card is available for five markets: the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia-New Zealand, and Latin America.
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Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads continues to steadily extend the audience reach it offers advertisers with additional external partnerships. A new integration with Spotify gives brands using Amazon DSP (demand side platform) programmatic access to the streaming service’s audio and video ad inventory — and 696 million global active monthly users. Complete with full-funnel measurement and attribution, the offering is available in the U.S., UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, and Mexico, with more countries to be added next year, per an official news post.
Amazon DSP advertisers are also being promised more efficient access to open ad inventory and curated deals through the supply side platform of Microsoft, which tapped Amazon as “preferred transition partner” as it phases out media buying through its own DSP. These latest moves follow earlier Amazon DSP integrations with Netflix, SiriusXM Media, Roku, and Disney Advertising.
Elsewhere, Amazon officially announced the launch of the interactive pause ads on Prime Video it began touting at the May 2024 Amazon Upfront. Available in the U.S., UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and other markets, pause ads appear when viewers pause their content stream and contain add-to-cart functionality.
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Cartology
In Australia, Woolworths’ Cartology retail media platform is expanding in-store media opportunities by installing an estimated 1,600 screens at the entrance to key “everyday needs” aisles in flagship stores nationwide that are promised to deliver 14 million weekly shopper impressions. Powered by bespoke technology, the screens enable real-time, store-specific directional messaging intended to guide shoppers down the aisle to find the advertised product. The new screens began rolling out in earnest this month, with early tests finding shopper engagement levels of 31% and an average sales uplift of 17%, per a news post.
Cartology is also expanding its 3,400-screen-strong digital-out-of-home network through the addition of 26 small-format screens in Region Group shopping centers as part of a renewed partnership with the real estate investment trust. Cartology’s total screen network encompasses some 20,000 touchpoints.
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Chedraui
Mexican multinational retailer Chedraui Group is leveraging a new “active content” solution from algorithmic customer engagement company Algonomy as a key pillar in its personalization strategy. The goal is to deliver meaningful, real-time content to shoppers across a variety of engagement channels including email, SMS, and WhatsApp, per a release.
Algonomy contends that enhanced visual storytelling boosts conversion rates by 30%, while scalable hyper-personalization enables use cases like real-time pricing in emails, dynamic content based on product affinity, and loyalty messaging.
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DoorDash Ads
DoorDash Ads’ efforts to scale its marketplace beyond restaurants to grocery, convenience, and other retail categories will be bolstered by a new deal with Criteo to serve as an extension of the U.S. sales team. Brands working with Criteo will have access to onsite DoorDash ad formats including video, display banners, sponsored product, and sponsored brands, as well as offsite channels such as display, video, search, and social. The two companies will also explore integrating their ad technologies over time.
Elsewhere, DoorDash has introduced an array of measurement enhancements that include category-level share reporting (powered by market research firm Circana) and a “ghost ads” technique for sponsored listings that is designed to improve iROAS (incremental return on ad spend) accuracy, the company said.
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Gopuff Ads
Gopuff Ads will soon become the first retail media network to let brands buy onsite ads programmatically through The Trade Desk, Matthew Fantazier, VP of Retail Data Partnerships at the ad tech company, told Adweek. Commerce tech company Koddi is facilitating the integration, which will begin with sponsored product ads. The Trade Desk expects additional ad formats and more retailers to follow in the coming months.
Gopuff, which just redesigned its website, has also established a pact with post-purchase commerce tech specialist Disco to deliver relevant personalized ads on post-checkout order status pages. Disco creates and places personalized ads for 1,000-plus direct-to-consumer brands.
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Loblaw Advance
Canadian retail media network Loblaw Advance is scaling the in-store digital screen network it operates with digital signage specialist Stratacache, building on current inventory of nearly 2,000 screens in roughly 700 stores to incorporate hundreds more locations this fall and continue expanding throughout 2026. Loblaw Companies Ltd. boasts a daily reach of 4.1 million in-store shoppers across its banners.
“By engaging consumers at the point of purchase, these newly placed screens will enhance the shopping experience and complement our existing in-store audio and promotional display offerings,” said Lauren Steinberg, EVP & Chief Digital Officer at Loblaw.
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Lowe’s One Roof Media
Lowe’s One Roof Media Network is one of the early adopters of a system that integrates in-store inventory into existing digital media workflows through a newly announced collaboration between Koddi and digital in-store media integration platform In-Store Marketplace (ISM). The new system lets brands activate ISM’s in-store placements through Koddi’s enterprise SSPs and third-party DSPs, delivering unified programmatic access to in-store media across some 30,000 total retail locations in the U.S.
“We’re giving brand partners the flexibility to buy and measure media in ways that align with their broader omnichannel strategies,” said John Storms, head of Lowe’s Media Network, in a release from Koddi and ISM. “By working through leading DSPs, we’re ensuring in-store and digital media are equally accessible and performance-driven, giving advertisers more meaningful ways to connect with Lowe’s shoppers,” he said.
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MixIn Media
MixIn, the retail media arm of Australian drinks and hospitality specialist Endeavor Group, has introduced a closed-loop attribution capability powered by the AI-driven customer data platform of Amperity and commerce media technology of Criteo. The offering “changes how retail media works in Australia,” according to Hayley Robinson, Mixin’s Head of Sales & GTM Retail Media.
The solution is believed to represent the first time that in-store sales can be effectively attributed to digital campaigns in Australia on a large scale, according to the companies, which intend to continue expanding transparency and measurement capabilities in the coming months.
Elsewhere, MixIn is working with data solution provider LiveRamp to power the newly launched Endeavour Retail Experience Network, a centralized framework designed to help brands capture consumer attention by linking live cultural moments to the point of purchase.
“Relevance begins in customer culture, and its value is realized at the counter. We believe that live and cultural moments are the new ‘top of funnel,’ meaning marketing needs to earn attention through brand acts and ads,” said Josie Brown, Endeavour Group’s Chief Marketing Officer.
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Sam’s Club Member Access Platform
Sam’s Club has rolled out a new presentation layer for its website and app that’s designed to facilitate better contextual advertising through the Sam’s Club Member Access Platform while also improving load times, video capabilities, and image sizes on product detail pages.
The upgrades let members choose between fulfillment options — pickup, curbside, or ship-to-home — at the start of their shopping trip, allowing Sam’s Club to guide their mission accordingly, Greg Pulsifer, SVP of Ecommerce, told Modern Retail. Curbside pickup, for instance, increases the relevance of prior purchases to enhance convenience, while shipping orders offer an opportunity to increase discovery, Pulsifer said.
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Unlimitail
Unlimitail, the international retail media alliance operated by global grocer Carrefour Group and Mars United parent Publicis Groupe, is rolling out a network of digital screens to Carrefour convenience stores across major cities in France. The aim is to equip several hundred stores by the end of 2025 and up to 900 locations by 2027.
The average store will carry two 50-inch screens, one either at the entrance or in the market area, and a second within a high-traffic aisle. The offering complements existing screens and “unifies dynamic planning, contextual distribution, and local sales attribution to deliver a more effective, end-to-end advertising experience,” per a news post.
As the rollout continues, Unlimitail has appointed Director of Development and Innovation Emmanuel Pottier to accelerate the deployment of new in-store and omnichannel solutions.
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Valiuz Adz
France-based Valiuz is expanding its relationship with The Trade Desk to give media buyers direct self-service access to its proprietary data segments via the global ad tech company’s omnichannel media buying platform. The extension lets advertisers move beyond onsite opportunities at Valiuz’s partnering retailer websites to stage campaigns across the internet, including connected TV and digital audio platforms.
By introducing offsite solutions fueled by consumer purchase data from both physical and online stores across 18 major retailers in France and elsewhere in Europe, Valiuz claims to be the first French retail media network to offer actionable self-service data. The launch will begin in France and gradually roll out across other Valiuz partners across Europe.
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Wakefern Media Exchange
Wakefern Food Corp. is implementing customer intelligence platform Birdzi to enhance and scale personalized marketing campaigns across its grocery banners, which include flagship ShopRite, Price Rite Marketplace, and The Fresh Grocer.
Pilot campaigns combining the shopper analytics, forecasting, and planning capabilities of the Wakefern Media Exchange network with Birdzi’s AI-driven personalized campaign engine have improved return on investment for the retailer-owned cooperative’s marketing efforts, per a release. Other stated benefits include comprehensive shopper insights, heightened outreach and personalization, and sharpened forecasting and planning.
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Walmart Connect
In advance of its third-annual “Inspire” event for subscribers of the Scintilla insights platform on Oct. 29, Walmart Data Ventures introduced a flurry of updates intended to help brands better allocate their retail media investments:
- The “digital landscapes” insights module offers 15 new metrics, including the ability to determine exactly where Walmart shoppers begin their journeys, the percentage of visitors to a product detail page that make a purchase, products added to and abandoned in carts, product- and category-level search keywords, and product content quality scores.
- A redesigned “customer perception” suite of shopper research tools streamlines survey creation, audience targeting, and feedback collection, including the ability to collaborate directly with Walmart Data Ventures’ shopper research team through in-app comments and real-time visual alerts.
- An always-on “performance center” dashboard for shopper behavior analysis delivers proactive, AI-surfaced, high-level performance highlights automatically without requiring report ordering.
Elsewhere, Walmart Connect received its first accreditation from the Media Rating Council for first-party click and impression metrics in its sponsored search ad platform across desktop, mobile web, and mobile in-app devices for display, video, and search.
In Mexico, the network is leveraging analytics platform AppsFlyer’s clean room capabilities to support custom audience building and offsite activation. It also is integrating with universal identifier ID5 to strengthen identity resolution capabilities.
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Mars United Commerce is a leading global commerce marketing practice that aligns people, technology, and intelligence to make the business of our clients better today than it was yesterday. Our worldwide capabilities coalesce into four key disciplines — Strategy & Analytics, Content & Experiences, Digital Commerce, and Retail Consultancy — that individually deliver unmatched results for clients and collectively give them an unparalleled network of seamlessly integrated functions across the entire commerce marketing ecosystem. For more information about our commerce media practice, contact Willy Blesener, SVP-Media, at [email protected].
