Albertsons launched its retail media network in 2021 and offered CPGs ads on its website and app through its partnership with CitrusAd and Merkle.
However, Albertsons Media Collective has evolved quite a bit since then. It now offers CPGs the ability to run connected TV (CTV) ads with its new offering, Collective TV. CTV is the “fastest-growing major ad channel in the US of all formats,” according to eMarketer data.
Retail Brew sat down with Evan Hovorka, VP of product and innovation at Albertsons Media Collective, on the sidelines of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Connected Commerce Summit last month to talk about the company’s retail media strategy.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What’s the most recent retail media innovation at Albertsons?
I think CTV, digital out-of-home and in-store—three very special channels—we’ve been in on all three. But, CTV, in particular, because a lot of the TV and CTV is executed by the agency, a traditional RMN-managed service model didn’t make sense for it, for all use cases.
So, our approach to Collective TV was to have three different channels to reflect the unique buying patterns and unique clients. DIY is the oldest. It’s our do-it-yourself channel…It’s CTV inventory bought through the Trade Desk leveraging our audience and measurement as modular capabilities within the agency seat. That’s what’s unique about it.
[The second] one is premium. That is your traditional managed service. This is us building curated deal IDs with NBCU, having custom partnerships with…YouTube. It is for CPGs primarily. It’s what you traditionally think of as a retail media product. A major soft drink brand calls us, they want to do curated CTV, they hand over the budget. We execute everything and show the results back to the client. That’s our premium offering.
The premium piece will be our primary offering [in the coming year.] It’s available now, and [it will] be a bigger focus next year as well. We’ll just continue to add capabilities and inventory sources to it, including testing other buying platforms.
The third one is our syndication channel, and that’s where we’re supporting inventory providers with our capabilities. Publishers like NBCU, Disney—they all sell a tremendous amount of inventory directly, which is great. We’re not invited to that party. So, can we help them with insights, audiences, measurement—basically, any trends around demographics, sales trends, regional, geo, those types of insights.
Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know
Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.
If we were to wrap all of that into one bundled answer. We want to have a product in every place that people are transacting on CTV and LTV (Lifetime Value) today. We recognize that means we have to wear different hats—manage service for some full-scale hands on, all the way to almost do nothing.
Talk to me about in-store retail media.
We’ve had in-store channels live for many years…They’re generally siloed channels like shelf talkers, physical printed signage on the floor, the walls, the windows, you see this every day as a shopper.
Some of those are monetized, some of those are the enterprises pushing out messaging. You’ve then seen expansions into, in our case, we’ve got many stores that have fuel stations and those fuel screens have an opportunity to be monetized.
We’re piloting that this holiday season. And anywhere that you’ve shopped in Albertsons or Safeway or Jewel-Osco, you’ll see screens at the deli counters or point-of-sale. I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect deployment of screens. I don’t think any store in the US has a perfect deployment, but it’s a really healthy base.
Part of the pilot is to test where relevancy is important. So, yes, you’re filling up your car with fuel, maybe there’s road snacks, or last-minute items, or quick-hit items, or you can put any product in there. If [someone’s] on their way to the store, and you know that, it could be any relevant item.
What are you most looking forward to in retail media?
Companies like Google and Meta are showing up with dedicated RMN teams that are able to flex and build dedicated RMN tracks…What that has done is created an environment ripe for innovation and partnership, because everyone is looking to build something new and is willing to roll up their sleeves.
So when you make a phone call, or they make a phone call, it’s love at first sight.