Retail Media That Delivers: Snapshots From Retail Media Summit Canada 2025

Marketing That Delivers

General Mills is on a journey to maximize retail media opportunities. This effort has involved shifting mindsets, adopting a "team sport" internal structure to retail media planning, and building partnerships in closed-loop measurement with retail media networks (RMNs) — directly linking spend to tangible results like customer conversions. 

Jeevan Grewal, associate director of omnichannel at General Mills, joined Rohit Sriram, VP and GM of online grocery and retail media, Loblaw Companies Limited, for the opening fireside keynote with Lisa Johnston, P2PI editorial director, for a conversation about this journey. 

Read the full story here. 

In-Store Media – Raising the Bar in 2025

Chris Riegel, CEO and founder of Stratacache — a retail technology and solutions provider that tracks content on more than 60 RMNs daily and serves 2,000 customers globally — weighed in on the maturation of RMNs in Canada and where they currently stand.   

Canada, he explained, is entering what he calls the "winner-takes-most" phase. "We’re beginning to see in-store retail media scale up. The first and second movers are taking things to scale, raising the bar," said Riegel, from driving more customer trips as well as revenues.  

While online and mobile customer retail media platforms are seeing relatively flat annual growth of about 1% — a reflection of their market maturity — retail media is expected to grow at a robust 30.67% over the next four years. 

Still, the financial potential remains largely untapped, ready to skyrocket. Riegel highlights a major paradox in the current marketing landscape. "In the U.S. and Canada, approximately $400 billion a year is spent on digital marketing, but 99.8% of that is not spent in-store, even though shoppers spend 93% of their money in-store," he explained. "So, there’s a huge disconnect." 

While Riegel acknowledged that in-store spending will never account for 93% of all digital marketing, he predicts that it will rise significantly in the coming years. He cites a Bain & Co. estimate that retail media networks will represent 50% of total digital marketing expenditures by 2030.   

As the Canadian RMN sector shifts toward a "winner-takes-most" strategy, the (multi-)million-dollar question is: How much will the winning players stand to gain? "The top two, three or four retail media networks will take 80% of the revenues," Riegel predicted. 

From Inspiration to Purchase

Whether it’s a coupon offer or an email in recognition of loyalty, consumers expect brand interactions to be personalized and relevant to their purchase history and buying patterns. But what happens when they’re not? Sherif Fahmy, vice president of commercial strategy at Inmar Intelligence, illustrated what’s at stake during his eye-opening session. 

He noted that 76% of consumers get frustrated when brands and retailers fail to deliver personalized, connected experiences. Of brands that communicate with them digitally, Fahmy said "consumers are starting to recognize, 'Gee, you don't show up in a way that demonstrates you know who we are.'"  

Conversely, he said 72% of Canadian shoppers would spend more with a brand/retailer that consistently delivers a personalized shopping experience. "Commercially, we know that the outcome is positive," said Fahmy. "They’re willing to spend more [and] shop more often." 

When it comes to personalization best practices, he advised following the four P's — product, price, presence/place and promotion. "Personalization is really about knowing your audience, disrupting your audience and being really disciplined about why you want to engage," said Fahmy, who suggests leveraging RMNs as personalized powerhouses for customer segmentation. "Ask the RMNs, 'Are the people we need to grow the business available and ready to engage?'" 

Fahmy shared examples of what effective customer personalization might look like in action, from a lapsed buyer who strives to "save as much as possible" to a frequent buyer of a particular category driven by "value and convenience." To entice the former to return and make a purchase, you might "offer a small but immediate discount to address budget concern." 

The frequent buyer, however, would need a "compelling reason" to choose a brand over her usual favorite, such as a 50% discount. As for loyal buyers, start the relationship-building with "exclusive access to new/limited-edition items."  

Winning at Retail Media: The U.S. Retailer’s Perspective

Succeeding in the increasingly fragmented retail media landscape requires a strong point of difference and an ever-shifting focus to keep pace with the needs of brands and today’s shoppers. Although she was sidelined by travel difficulties, Molly Hjelm, head of ad sales, at Dollar General Media Network, recorded a 10-minute video for attendees that provided a quick snapshot into how they’re engaging with consumers and partnering with brands for omnichannel success.

Lessons From the Frontlines: Driving In-Store RMN Success

In the session, industry leaders from the Canadian DOOH industry shared key insights and best practices that can be applied to RMNs.  

Moderated by Owen Remers, VP, technology, strategy and innovation, Cineplex Digital Media, the discussion highlighted the critical role of measurement and strong content. Cineplex Digital Media’s DOOH presence includes 95 shopping malls nationwide, with more than 750 screens.  

Remers posed the first question of the panel to Victoria Cromie, managing director at Public Groupe’s Mars United Commerce Canada, for an agency perspective on what’s important in a RMN partner. "It’s always been measurement," she said, noting that the agency has its own internal measurement platform, Marilyn, which tracks key metrics like sales lift and incremental return on ad spend (iROAD). She emphasized measurement is what drives business decisions, including their clients' spend.  

The panel also featured Jonathan Franco, global head of retail media at Broadsign, a Montreal-based OOH advertising platform software developer. He also spent 14 years at Neptune Retail Solutions, where he helped brands drive sales growth across grocery, drug, and dollar store channels. He noted that many best practices in DOOH can be effectively applied to retail media.  

Like location, location, location! Advertisers want to be in high-traffic areas — whether it's a downtown billboard or in-store with a digital screen end cap. But according to Franco, location is more than just foot traffic; it's also about tailoring creative and content to the unique shopper demographics of each area. 

"Every single store has a different soul — you’re in different neighborhoods, so you should be adapting," he advised. Related to that, content is king and doesn’t always need to be highly promotional. 

"One of the key lessons from the OOH industry is that it’s not just about monetization," Franco underscored, but goals like consumer awareness and education in addition to sales. "There’s definitely an opportunity for retailers to do a category play. For instance, educating shoppers about skincare regimes across various different products." The likely result? "Increased basket size."  

John Fanous, head of omnichannel retail at Google Canada — which offers DOOH advertising through its Display and Video 360 (DV360) marketplace — agreed that the path to success is relevance, delivering content that genuinely helps consumers. "Shoppers are starved for time, and their dollars are being stretched," he explained.  

And so, rather than using retail media networks solely for self-promotion, retailers should look at adding value to the shopping experience. "The analogy I always use is, if you’re a grocer, are you just pushing product? Or also a recipe that's rich and relevant to the customer [that includes the product]?" 

Winning Together: Driving a Seamless Customer Experience 

With its Moi Rewards loyalty program, Metro — a leading retailer operating conventional, discount, specialty and pharmacy stores in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick — has the power to segment 150 distinct customer attributes. These include breakdowns by basket composition, promotional and price sensitivity, and coupon usage. 

Imagine a segmentation of customers whose purchases are increasingly made up of more Canadian-made products. They would likely respond positively to messaging promoting domestic products, including through retail media. 

This was an example of effective alignment of merchandising, loyalty and retail media shared by Alain Tadros, Metro’s CMO and vice president, digital strategy. He was joined on stage by Chris Thomson, senior vice president for the U.S. and Canada, Dunnhumby. Dunnhumby has been providing merchandising and loyalty analytics, as well as loyalty activation, for Metro since 2009, when the global firm opened its first Canadian office.  

Tadros said Moi "unifies the view of our customers across all banners," informing “how we work with CPGs.”  

Moi has a highly engaged membership, with Metro’s digital ecosystem reaching 1 million social media followers and generating 100 million impressions annually. Then there’s its 10 million weekly store visits across its retail banners. Metro can also target these customers through retail media: "We're able to deliver with our reach more customers than the highest-rated TV show," noted Tadros.  

Metro launched Moi in 2023 in Quebec, uniting 900 stores across five banners and quickly becoming the province's most popular loyalty program, with 79% of Metro customers "actively engaging" in Moi, according to Leger. A mere 18 months later, in October 2024, Moi expanded to Ontario, increasing its engaged membership to 4 million, up from 2.7 million a year ago. The program is now available in over 1,175 stores. 

When it comes to leveraging loyalty and retail media in connection with merchandise, Thomson emphasized the importance of vendors and retailers aligning objectives. "Everyone needs to be a bit vulnerable," he said, "put their cards on the table and say, 'What are we trying to do?'"

Thomson said that focus will make the execution of a loyalty, retail media and digital campaign stronger. "It's not about us or you; it's about both of us." That mentality will bring planning back to the fundamental question of "what we need to know about the customer," from their behaviors and motivations to preferences, in developing a strong strategy on which to act.