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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Albertsons Media Collective (U.S.)
Albertsons is adding beacons to shopping carts and baskets to track footfall and dwell time in front of in-store retail media ad placements as the retailer hones its matched market framework for measuring incrementality and builds out the digital display network, detailed Liz Roche, VP of Media and Measurement, during a recent episode of The Middlemen Podcast.
The small devices communicate with fixed sensors positioned near digital screens to precisely collect traffic data, which then can be linked to transaction data to validate sales impact. The technology is provided by Walkbase, a subsidiary of digital in-store specialist Stratacache.
“We really want to get close to that verified impression. That’s going to be key to our [ad] inventory management [and] how we traffic media and drive results,” Roche said.
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BJ’s Media Edge (U.S.)
BJ’s Wholesale Club is expanding its digital screen network with the addition of interactive screens within beer, wine, and liquor aisles to complement the digital endcaps already in place in clubs.
Currently live in all BJ’s clubs that carry alcohol, the placement integrates media with merchandise, delivering opportunities for brand storytelling, shopper education, or personalized wine and cocktail recommendations to enhance product discovery, according to a release from in-store media platform Looma, which operates the network (and provides in-store screens for other retailers such as Kroger).
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Chedraui (Latin America)
Mexican multinational retailer Chedraui Group plans to open 152 stores this year, expanding its digital and in-store marketing reach in Mexico and the U.S. The company will mostly concentrate on its Supercito format to compete more directly with convenience store leaders, Mexico Business News reported. The small format targets urban areas, emphasizing groceries and perishables.
In Mexico, the retailer intends to open 147 locations: 130 Supercito stores, nine Chedraui locations (the flagship mass format), and one Arteli supermarket. In the U.S., it expects to open five grocery stores: four El Super sites and one Fiesta Mart location.
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Coles 360 (Australia-New Zealand)
Coles 360 is the first retail media network to enter the Australian Retail Media Certification Program just launched by IAB Australia and IAB Europe. The program seeks to align measurement practices across networks, reducing inconsistency and creating comparability, according to a release.
The regional effort targets both Australian retailers and ad tech companies, adapting processes used by IAB Europe’s program. Following completion of an independent audit, compliant participants receive a certification badge valid for two years.
“Measurement plays an increasingly critical role in retail media,” said Tiffany Chen, Coles 360’s General Manager. “This certification is an important step toward creating industry-wide standardization and strengthening accountability, giving brands and agencies greater confidence in how retail media performance is measured and reported.”
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Fmedia (LatAm)
Chilean multinational retailer Grupo Falabella is making its largest-ever capital expenditure in 2026 as part of a multi-year growth strategy, Mexico Business Newsreported. A majority of the $900 million investment — $500 million — will go toward transforming, expanding, and modernizing the company’s existing retail spaces as well as opening 17 new stores across Latin America. The plan targets Mallplaza shopping centers, home improvement chain Sodimac, Tottus supermarket and mass formats, department store chain Falabella Retail, and Banco Falabella financial services.
“Today, customers are not only looking for products, but for experiences,” said CEO Alejandro Gonzalez, according to the publication. “We do not need more square meters to grow sales, but better square meters.”
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Kroger Precision Marketing (U.S.)
KPM has unveiled a cross-channel measurement solution named PrecisionView 360. The tool analyzes performance to determine how media and purchase incentives amplify each other and identify the incremental sales impact of specific ad types, according to a corporate post.
Already available for select campaigns, the solution:
- analyzes uplift contribution by individual ad types as well as combinations.
- uses control-group comparisons to account for purchase predisposition and isolate true media impact.
- identifies the unique households reached by each ad type.
Among other recent updates, KPM has incorporated Pinterest “Collections Ads,” an option that lets brands showcase products alongside recipe and meal content in a fully shoppable format through which shoppers can add items directly to a cart in Kroger’s app, according to a corporate post.
Meanwhile, the network reduced lead times from four to three weeks for managed offsite tactics on channels including connected TV, audio, offsite display, online video, Meta, Pinterest, and Snapchat. (Tactics involving influencers or with custom landing pages as the click-through destination are not included.)
Elsewhere, the Kroger Ad Platform has rolled out a variety of activation and measurement capabilities, including the ability for advertisers to:
- select multiple brands for product listing ads through a single account.
- directly manage Meta campaigns using premium Kroger audiences.
- adjust bids while comparing live performance data within one dashboard.
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Lowe’s Media Network (U.S.)
Lowe’s is integrating portrait-format videos into select product detail and product listing pages as part of a broader strategy to scale the use of video for complex projects where shoppers would benefit from gaining a richer context. The retailer recently added video to its homepage.
“Consumers don’t want to see just a static image anymore. They want movement. They want to see a refrigerator with doors that are actually opening,” Joe Cano, the retailer’s SVP of Digital Commerce, told Path to Purchase Institute (P2PI).
Lowe’s Media Network is looking toward brand partners for content co-creation and evaluating how to better leverage shopper activity to deliver more personalized recommendations, according to P2PI.
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Triangle Retail Media (Canada)
Canadian Tire Corp. is scaling deployment of MOSaiC, the custom retail intelligence platform being developed in collaboration with Microsoft, to physical stores and digital channels. Following a 2025 initial pilot, the expansion will cover the Canadian Tire, Mark’s, and SportChek chains. The new platform leverages advanced analytics, AI models, and generative capabilities to synthesize internal sales and Triangle Rewards loyalty program data with external inputs like weather patterns and holidays.
“MOSaiC will help our teams make better decisions about what to offer, when, and where, by connecting Triangle Rewards insights and local context at scale. That allows us to move beyond selling products to serving the occasions of customers’ lives,” said Canadian Tire CEO Greg Hicks in a release.
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Uber Advertising (Worldwide)
Uber Advertising has introduced an immersive ad format called Journey Takeover that aligns messaging across in-car tablets and the Uber app. The format for the first time includes a moving icon on the map that riders use to monitor their trip progress, weaving exclusive, brand-led digital experiences into key moments of a ride to create a cohesive, full-trip story aligned with real-world movement, according to Uber.
“The moving icon on the map is one of the most attention-grabbing spaces in the app,” said Global Head Kristi Argyilan in a release. “When a brand adds something genuinely interesting or useful at that time, it changes how the journey — and the brand — is remembered.”
The premium offering is available to select brands for campaigns limited by market and time to ensure contextually relevant experiences, the company said. Initial markets include the U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Brazil.
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Unlimitail (Europe)
Unlimitail is leveraging generative AI to host a “Creative Studio” that helps brands produce ad creative that is seamlessly adapted for use across all required onsite, offsite, and in-store formats in as little as 48 hours, according to a release.
The new Creative Studio is trained on the production and analysis of thousands of creative assets managed by Unlimitail, the international retail media alliance operated by global grocer Carrefour Group and Mars United parent Publicis Groupe. The technology guarantees technical compliance while generating assets based on a brand’s core elements and a brief focused on business objectives, natively integrating message hierarchy, call-to-action effectiveness, and other proven engagement standards.
“Providing this solution to the market allows advertisers of all sizes to reach a new milestone. It is now possible to scale creative variations with an ROI-focused mindset, making high performance accessible to everyone,” said Frederic Clement, Unlimitail’s Chief Product Officer.
Elsewhere, Unlimitail has directly integrated in-store sales attribution within its platform for onsite campaigns in France, and will gradually expand the capability to other geographies and network retail partners. The solution is enabled by attribution data on loyalty cardholder purchases, which account for 67% of total sales across the Carrefour network, according to a release.
The solution lets advertisers move beyond ecommerce ROAS for products highlighted in a campaign to measure omnichannel ROAS as well as brand-halo ROAS, the latter of which identifies a campaign’s impact across the entire product portfolio.
“This innovation automates the link between digital campaigns and in-store sales, in a 100% deterministic way and with self-service access,” said Unlimitail COO Thibault Hennion.
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Valiuz (Europe)
Retail media network and data alliance Valiuz has integrated campaign measurement for leading French retailer Intermarche into the Valiuz Connect retail media data platform. The move follows Valiuz’s merger with Infinity Advertising, the retail media arm of retailer collective Mousquetaires Group, for whom Intermarche is the flagship brand.
The Intermarche data will now join data from French retailers Auchan and Chronodrive, providing “unified performance measurement for retail media campaigns across the largest grocery perimeter available today,” said Alban Achleuniger, Retail Media Business Leader for France at Valiuz, in a release.
Launched last June, Valiuz Connect also supports appliance and electronics retailer Boulanger and will add other retailers as the platform expands to all of Valiuz’s European partners by 2027.
Elsewhere, Boulanger will roll out an in-store retail media offering to 75 stores (most of its footprint) following a one-store pilot launched in November 2025 by Valiuz and digital signage provider Imediacenter. (The two companies merged last summer.) The plan calls for roughly one dozen screens to be installed in each store by the end of 2026, with the ultimate objective of building out an in-store network as a companion to digital advertising, managed through a single point of contact.
“Strengthening our in-store presence and overall omnichannel approach addresses a double challenge for Boulanger: giving more weight to the physical store — particularly in the face of rising agentic commerce — and gaining a new strategic edge over [online-only retailers],” said Olivier Beal, Boulanger’s Director of Supplier Strategy and Purchasing, in a release.
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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].
