News Briefs

CVS Media Exchange (CMX), CVS Health’s retailer media network, recently introduced the CMX Private Marketplace, giving marketers a more direct way to access and roll out enhanced Sponsored Product campaigns. 

[Also Read: CVS Media Exchange Launches Self-Serve Offering]

As highlighted on CMX’s website, the new Private Marketplace offers brands:

• An enhanced Sponsored Product experience that strategically places brands to help guide consumers as they’re considering purchases in high-intent areas of CVS.com. According to CMX, this solution expands targeting capabilities to reach customers beyond a brand’s category — whether in-grid, within results or on product detail pages.
• Access to 14- and 30-day lookback windows, allowing brands to see offline sales insights at the SKU level for a campaign. By combining Sponsored Product and Dynamic Ranking, marketers can also unlock “more sought-after top slots for better brand visibility.” 
• Assistance building, monitoring and optimizing campaigns so brands can launch in “as little as two business days.”

Redner's Markets, an employee-owned regional grocery chain with 44 stores across Eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, has partnered with in-store retail media platform Grocery TV (GTV). 

Redner's will leverage GTV's in-house technology stack to power screens at the entrance and front end of stores. The retailer will also use GTV's Content Management System (CMS) to deliver relevant content to shoppers, including promotions for services such as Redner's Ready, its online ordering and curbside pickup option, and HealthCents, a nutrition program led by Redner's corporate dietitian, Meredith McGrath.

The screens will offer brand advertising opportunities in addition to retailer content.

"We're always looking for ways to improve our stores and better serve our customers," Gary Redner, chief operating officer at Redner's Markets, said in a media release. "Partnering with Grocery TV allows us to modernize our stores and highlight the broad range of services that our customers can access."

"We're excited to partner with Redner's to support their vision of improving the customer experience, while unlocking incremental revenue for their business," added Don Oelke, co-founder and COO at Grocery TV.

With the addition of Redner's Markets, GTV's network has surpassed 5,000 stores. Redner's joins more than 100 grocery retailers that partner with GTV.

Breaktime Media, a leader in shopper engagement and consumer promotion solutions, unveiled its Content and Loyalty Hub, a new loyalty and rewards platform designed to help CPG brands create an always-on, interactive destination to engage and award their consumers. The hub offers marketers a seamless, customizable solution that acts as a base camp for campaigns, storytelling, branded content and consumer promotions, managed end-to-end by Breaktime's award-winning team.

"For 15 years, we've been passionate about creating engaging content and destinations that connect consumers with some of the world's most recognizable brands," said Josh Ginsberg, president and general manager at Breaktime Media, in a news release. "The future of commerce is personalized – with our new Content and Loyalty Hub, we're taking the next step in empowering brands with the tools to build more meaningful and personalized relationships and loyalty with their shoppers through commerce-enabled content and gamification."

The hub enables brands to connect with consumers by leveraging the singular or combined power of commerce-focused content, gamification and rewards to build repeat engagement and loyalty. Shoppers can interact with personalized content that fuels their path to purchase, such as discovering a new recipe, participating in a quiz or learning more about the brand via customized content experiences.

Brands also have the option to allow users to create profiles and track their activity, as well as point earnings and spending, providing brands access to a deeper level of zero-party and first-party data. Consumers can earn points by engaging with content, making purchases and redeeming those points for rewards, offering brands a meaningful way to incentivize and reward consumer engagement.

"As brands continue to face the challenge of creating meaningful connections with consumers, our Content and Loyalty Hub is designed to offer a flexible platform that supports brand engagement from education through rewards," said Alex Harrison, Breaktime Media content and loyalty lead and vice president of sales, in the release. "We've combined everything brands need — personalized content, gamified rewards and valuable data insights — into one solution, making it easy for brands to create impactful consumer experiences that not only inspire but also drive measurable results."

With the Content and Loyalty Hub, brands can choose the features that best fit their objectives — whether it's branded content, consumer promotions or a combination of the two — to drive engagement and inspire action. Designed to evolve with industry needs, the hub supports brands' growing need to own their consumer relationships, offering a sustainable way to collect data that respects privacy while driving meaningful engagement.

Through Breaktime's solution, CPG brands gain a customizable, centralized space where they can drive all of their marketing tactics and share their brand story, seamlessly integrating e-commerce with shoppable content and in-store experiences for a cohesive customer journey.

Breaktime Media's experienced team handles the complete suite of services involved in the hub, from technology and creative development to consumer promotions (including legal compliance, prizing and fulfillment).

About Breaktime Media
Breaktime Media helps shoppers decide what to buy and where to buy it. They work with brands like Colgate-Palmolive, General Mills, Nestle, Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever to reimagine the way people engage with their brands by architecting interactive content solutions that inspire action. Breaktime distributes the content to their network of 36 million-plus shoppers and can plug it in with any other tactic along the path to purchase, resulting in an average $3-plus return per $1 spent.

Reddit has partnered with real-time marketing and measurement company InMarket to measure the real-world impact of advertising campaigns on the forum social platform, including store visits and sales lift. 

With this partnership, Reddit advertisers can now access InMarket Lift Conversion Index (LCI) insights to optimize campaigns inflight and improve ROAS within the platform. InMarket’s LCI is a closed-loop attribution solution, measuring the advertising impact on consumer behaviors, real-world visits and sales.

"We're excited to bring InMarket's LCI offering to all advertisers on the platform,”  Ryan Brendle, global head of marketing science, Reddit, said in an announcement. “As marketing measurement has become increasingly fragmented, we see the value of meeting our advertisers where they are, in order to bring them the insights that matter to them the most and unlock success."

The $55 billion retail media industry is experiencing rapid growth and quickly emerging as the new center of the advertising universe. By 2026, spend in retail media is projected to reach roughly $125 billion, with an annual growth rate exceeding 20%. 

In response, the Women in Retail Media Collective (WRM Collective) has officially launched to empower and support women within this booming sector, offering a community designed to amplify their voices, foster professional development and unlock opportunities. The network was co-founded by industry leaders Emma Helsloot, who is also director of sales, retail media EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) at Pentaleap, and Ana Laura Zain, Pentaleap’s chief marketing officer.

WRM Collective members also gain access to a curated calendar of industry events, monthly trend insights and a job listings board tailored to retail media professionals. Additionally, the network’s mentorship program connects women with seasoned professionals who provide guidance on career growth and industry leadership. 

WRM Collective is supported and backed by industry associations and experts committed to advancing diversity, including the IAB Europe, FMCG Guys, Pentaleap and Skai.

“Our vision for the [WRM Collective] is to create an environment where women at all stages of their careers feel empowered to lead and innovate,” Helsloot said in a media release. “We’re bringing together women from diverse backgrounds to share their experiences, offer support, and inspire change within the industry.”

“In my role at Pentaleap, we prioritize creating open, efficient ecosystems that foster collaboration and innovation,” Zain added. “Through WRM Collective, we’re extending this vision to empower women across the industry, building a community where each contribution is recognized and celebrated as we shape a more inclusive future together.”

“The retail media industry is at a pivotal moment, with technology and innovation driving new possibilities every day,” added Diana Abebrese, global retail media lead at EPAM Systems. “WRM Collective offers a collaborative environment where women can harness these advancements, share expertise and shape the future of retail media together. I'm thrilled to be part of this initiative that’s dedicated to empowering women to lead in such a dynamic field.”

The Kroger Co. is rolling out radio-frequency identification (RFID) inventory automation technology as a way to improve the associate and customer experience, beginning with the bakery department. 

The grocer has partnered with Avery Dennison, an identification technology solutions provider, to make item-level digital identification possible in stores and gain more frequent and accurate inventory information that enhances freshness, reduces waste and improves the associate experience, per a media release from the tech company.

This collaboration will begin in the bakery department, implementing RFID-embedded labels on each item, which provides valuable data to automate inventory management and optimize freshness. This is a “foundational step” in delivering a more seamless customer and associate experience across all fresh categories long term, per the release.

RFID inventory tracking is a system that uses radio waves to track and manage inventory. RFID tags are often attached to products or pallets and send information to RFID readers that update inventory databases.

“Kroger’s customers and associates are at the heart of everything we do,” Jordan Poff, vice president of retail operations at Kroger, said in the release. “Our work with Avery Dennison will improve inventory visibility, which means products will be on the shelves when our customers want them, while enabling our associates to spend more time with our customers.”

“For decades, Avery Dennison has been the driving force behind connecting physical products with a digital identity to unlock data accuracy and efficiency in retail and supply chain operations,” added Julie Vargas, vice president and general manager of identification solutions, Avery Dennison. “With this collaboration, we are committed to Kroger’s initiatives to optimize associate time, reduce waste from overproduction and ultimately deliver a uniquely valuable customer experience.”