蘑菇AV

The situation: Strong performances in ecommerce and pharmacy helped Albertsons beat top- and bottom-line expectations despite continued pressure across the grocery industry. Albertsons is also winning over more shoppers by making its loyalty program more rewarding and easier to use. Membership rose 14% in the quarter thanks to more deals, simpler ways to earn points, and bigger cash-back perks. Our take: Consumers remain laser-focused on value, especially at the grocery store. While food inflation has eased since the sharp spikes of 2021 to 2023, the impact of those increases鈥攑lus the threat of new tariff-driven price hikes鈥攈as shoppers watching their grocery bills closely. 础濒产别谤迟蝉辞苍蝉鈥� 14% growth in loyalty membership last quarter signals just how eager consumers are for savings. With more people eating at home to stretch their dollars, 础濒产别谤迟蝉辞苍蝉鈥� value-focused approach helped it outperform expectations and could drive strength in coming quarters.

A leaked Adweek-reviewed file details how The Trade Desk partners with 49 retailers worldwide to sell ad placements built on shopper data. The document reveals steep markups and inconsistent rules: Albertsons charges up to 45% of media costs, Best Buy limits custom audiences, Costco sets $100K minimums, and Walmart imposes fees capped at $3.50 CPMs plus measurement charges. Other retailers add restrictions around ad categories or approvals. The leak highlights both the value and complexity of retail media as brands chase audience targeting tied directly to transactions. Transparency remains a challenge, with costs and conditions varying widely by partner.

The news: China is outpacing the US in retail media鈥檚 global rise, with nearly half of its digital ad spending now flowing through retail platforms. While Amazon still leads globally, its growth is slowing鈥攅xpected to rise just 18.6% in 2025. Meanwhile, players like Uber Eats, Meijer, and Albertsons are growing ad revenues at triple-digit rates. Our take: Retail media is becoming more fragmented and competitive. Success now requires portfolio diversification, especially as new channels鈥攍ike last-mile delivery and in-store signage鈥攇ain momentum. What began as an Amazon-centric, US-led trend is now a worldwide shift reshaping how consumers discover, consider, and buy.

Albertsons struggles to fend off competition from mass merchants and club retailers: The grocer is leaning on promotions, private labels, and its pharmacy business to attract value-focused shoppers.

An increasingly fragmented retail media ecosystem has made it difficult for advertisers to track campaign performance across multiple retail media networks (RMNs), said Liz Roche, vice president of measurement and media at Albertsons Media Collective.

Albertsons looks ahead: With the proposed Kroger merger in the rearview mirror, the grocer raised its annual profit forecast and mapped out its growth plans.

Albertsons blames Kroger for blocked merger: The grocer is seeking billions in damages, claiming the latter failed to make necessary concessions to appease regulators.

FTC scores another antitrust victory after judge blocks Kroger-Albertsons merger: The deal would reduce grocery competition and raise prices for shoppers, the court decided.

Those perks also compelled grocery chains like Albertsons and Ahold Delhaize to pour resources into ecommerce, eroding their margins. Despite the challenging backdrop, US retail sales still rose 2.8% YoY in Q1, in line with our forecast.

By narrowing their assortments to products guaranteed to sell, CPGs are opening the door for retailers to use innovation to drive customers to their private labels鈥攁n opportunity that Walmart, Kroger, and Albertsons are taking full advantage of. 3 in 4 shoppers say private label products are just as good as name brands, while 49% actively seek out store brands, per a February Ipsos survey.

The organizations sent letters to several pharma players, including Costco, Kroger, Walmart, and Albertsons, urging them not to offer the pill. They noted the millions of dollars they have in each company鈥檚 stock. For context, Kroger, Albertsons, and Walmart have already chosen not to dispense the abortion pill in their pharmacies, but CVS and Walgreens do in states where it鈥檚 legally permissible.

The opportunity: Home Depot isn鈥檛 the only retailer attempting to win spending from brands whose products aren鈥檛 on its shelves: Albertsons, Ulta Beauty, and Best Buy are among the many companies looking to expand their reach鈥攁nd consequently their share of an increasingly lucrative market.

Protein Pints, launched in 2023, this year made its way onto the shelves of Albertsons, Kroger, Sprouts, and Target, which is expected to boost the ice cream brand鈥檚 revenues to $20 million in 2025 from under $100,000 last year, per CNBC. David Protein Bars, which debuted last September, recently raised $75 million at a $725 million valuation.

Find us at Cannes: Marzano will be participating in two in-store retail media events hosted by Stratecache, sitting down with CVS, Albertsons, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to explore in-store retail media鈥檚 evolution, measurement, and influence on customer experience.

The lack of concern could be because most of these players鈥攊ncluding Walmart, Costco, Kroger, and Albertsons鈥攁lso operate pharmacies. So any spending decline for groceries could be offset by more customers picking up GLP-1 prescriptions. However, food and CPG companies are creating and changing products to meet the needs of GLP-1 patients.

Retailers prepare for looser antitrust scrutiny under Trump: The environment is likely to be more favorable for blockbuster mergers like the Kroger-Albertsons deal.

Albertsons is addressing measurement pain points: In January, Albertsons, long an advocate for improvements to retail media measurement, announced an API integration for its advertisers that enables them to bring campaign data into their own measurement models for analysis, addressing one of advertisers鈥� top retail media pain points.

Here鈥檚 how ad buyers ranked the retail media networks of 14 leading CPG-focused retailers鈥攊ncluding Ahold Delhaize, Albertsons, Amazon, Costco Wholesale, CVS, Instacart, Kroger, Target, and Walmart鈥攁ccording to the attributes they value most.

Albertsons Companies鈥� retail media network (RMN) launched 鈥淐ollective TV,鈥� expanding its CTV ad offering, which includes a shoppable ad product for YouTube and other platforms. Combining premium video, RMN data, and frictionless checkout holds substantial potential. But it will create a complex framework for retailers to navigate.

Both Albertsons and Kroger, for example, show fewer than six ads per page. But most retailers have made very minor changes to their ad density since last year. Among the 12 RMNs Pentaleap tracks in its Sponsored Products Benchmarks report, just half have made any changes to their ad loads at the page level over the previous year.

Albertsons marked the arrival of spring with several limited-edition, lemon-inspired food and beverage products across its Signature Select, Overjoyed, and Soleil private labels鈥攁dding seasonal excitement to its own brand portfolio.

Kroger and Albertsons are also vulnerable, with 9.1% and 6.5% shares of SNAP grocery dollars, respectively. Among non-grocers, Amazon and Target command 15.2% and 5.6% of SNAP recipients鈥� non-grocery spending, while Home Depot holds a notable 5.5% share鈥攈ighlighting just how far SNAP dollars extend across retail categories.

For example, in December 2024, 础濒产别谤迟蝉辞苍蝉鈥� website traffic (6.5 million) was nearly 500 times smaller than Amazon鈥檚. But 础濒产别谤迟蝉辞苍蝉鈥� loyalty program (44 million members) was only about four times smaller than Amazon Prime membership, highlighting the value of first-party data beyond just ecommerce. Broader forces are creating tailwinds for off-site retail media.