Ahold Delhaize USA Brings Retail Media In-House

Ahold Delhaize USA’s digital, e-commerce and commercial engine, Peapod Digital Labs, is growing its media network, AD Retail Media, by building an fully in-house, end-to-end agency.

AD Retail Media will harness insights from The Giant Company (Giant/Martin’s), Giant Food, Stop & Shop, FreshDirect, Hannaford and Food Lion, including the chains’ market presence and customer connections, to help CPG partners to further engage its East Coast customer base.

Peapod Digital Labs will evolve AD Retail Media through strategic partnerships and expanded capabilities, including:

• Launching a unified on-site and off-site platform to deliver a single point of activation and measurement,
• Leveraging proprietary data to create more targeted ads and improve ROAS,
• Enabling one dashboard for measured campaign results spanning transactions made on-site and across the web, and
• Enhancing self-serve control to help customers in simpler, more targeted way.

As AD Retail Media transitions fully in-house, Ahold Delhaize USA will also grow its retail media team. Publicis Groupe’s CitrusAd, Epsilon and Publicis Sapient will support the stand-up and scaling of the new team.

“This is a great example of Publicis Groupe’s ‘Power of One’ retail media strategy, with Epsilon, CitrusAd and Publicis Sapient all helping AD Retail media transform with new talent, expertise and capabilities,” said Thibault Hennion, managing director of international operations at Epsilon, in a news release.

AD Retail Media will transition to CitrusAd, powered by Epsilon, offering a unified onsite/offsite platform.

“The integration with Peapod Digital Labs will allow us to work efficiently together to achieve the goals of driving sales growth, reaching more customers with relevant content, and investing in customer value proposition,” said David Haase, CEO of CitrusAd Americas, in the release.

In addition, AD Retail Media will partner with LiveRamp Safe Haven as a data collaboration solution. Warren Jenson, president at LiveRamp said, “Data collaboration has become an absolute necessity for CPG brands seeking a competitive edge,” in the release.

Quotient will serve a smaller, but still important role in AD Retail Media by continuing to serve as the network's digital coupon provider. Prior to this move, Peapod Digital Labs relied on Quotient to develop and measure campaigns, even helping the media firm launch its promotion amplification tool as part of the vendor’s Retailer Performance Media Platform.

“These new partnerships are the beginning of many new capabilities that AD Retail Media will bring to market in 2023 and beyond,” added Fleeman. “Through the enhanced network, we expect our partners will be able to create more relevant, measurable, real-time campaigns that produce greater ROI both for the CPG and the customer.”

Ahold Delhaize USA brands operate about 2,048 stores in 23 states (as of April 2022), process more than 23 million transactions per week, have nearly 24 million active loyalty card users, and total more than $51 billion in annual sales.

“Retail media is already a sizable percentage of total advertising spend, with forecasts showing it will continue to grow significantly,” said JJ Fleeman, president, Peapod Digital Labs, in the release. “By bringing AD Retail Media in-house, we will create a connected go-to-market offering for CPGs, grounded in new capabilities, simplicity and value generation. As the space continues to grow, we’re proud to invest in retail media to continue to propel our companies — and our CPG partners — forward.”