Ocado has introduced a new retail media service called Ocado Ads, marking “a new chapter in its journey”.
The offer will help brands “drive measurable growth” and deliver customer “relevant advertising and a personalised experience”, The Grocer reported.
Ocado Ads features campaign planning and management tools in partnership with retail media platform Zitcha, alongside advertising options across onsite, offsite, social media, and connected TV. It also delivers insights and analytics via Ocado’s Beet platform
The online grocer said advertisers could also utilise the Ocado NPD Lab for “the fastest NPD in the UK” and employ A/B testing to assess the performance of various creatives.
The retailer, currently the UK’s fastest-growing supermarket for six consecutive months according to the latest Kantar data, aims to become “the home of test and learn for grocery advertising” in the UK.
Head of Ocado Ads Jack Johnson said the venture “is raising the bar for retail media”.
“We encourage all our suppliers to grow with us and so we’ve created Ocado Ads with a view to providing another growth engine for brands. Ocado has been an innovative and disruptive force in the industry since its creation and we believe this will boost our approach to retail media.
“Ocado Ads has a flexible operating model that challenges the one-size-fits-all approach of traditional retail media networks,” Johnson added. “Whether you’re an advertiser or an agency, you can have it your way: fully self-serve, completely managed, or anywhere in between.”
The launch comes as ad spend for the retail media industry is expected to pass £4bn in the UK this year, according to Insider Intelligence forecasts, and set to almost double that by 2027, the highest spend in western Europe.
Most supermarkets now offer retail media services, with many having refreshed and repackaged their offerings into specialised retail media agencies.
The big four grocers now all have dedicated media groups, alongside Co-op, Boots, Superdrug, Deliveroo and more.
Zitcha CEO Troy Townsend told The Grocer the company was helping Ocado “integrate the entire business around its retail media network”.
“For us that means building out cross-functional capability and offering full visibility on the planning and delivery of retail media for the whole business,” he said.
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