Midwest grocer Woodman’s Markets streamlines retail media offering

An independent regional grocery chain is launching a centralized, white-label, self-serve supplier media portal.

Woodman’s Markets, which operates 19 locations throughout Wisconsin and northern Illinois, is partnering with omnichannel retail media platform Brandcrush to combine its retail media business, including in-store, out-of-store and online assets, from disparate, fragmented systems into a single solution for advertisers.

The grocery retailer manages a number of shopper media programs in-house and works with third-party providers, such as digital coupon platform Shop-to-Cook. Leveraging the Brandcrush technology, Woodman’s can continue to work with these third-party providers while streamlining and consolidating all of its retail media ecosystem into a single portal.

“Partnering with Brandcrush is a perfect fit, as their proven technology consolidates all of our media opportunities for our suppliers across our business to drive sales,” said Dustin Wales, marketing director at Woodman’s Markets. “This is an area we have wanted to scale for some time. Brandcrush provides us with the tools to consolidate, manage and scale our media, and build a professional portal for our suppliers to utilize. We have the confidence that Brandcrush will help us grow our media program without having to immediately grow our team. Technologies like this help to level the retail media playing field. Our suppliers, including regional and local brands, can access a self-serve media portal for real-time and easy access to opportunities. It benefits both small-to-mid-sized brands and our major multinational suppliers.”

“We’re thrilled to partner with such a progressive, trusted retailer as Woodman’s,” said Teresa Aprile, co-founder and CEO, Brandcrush. “Independent U.S. grocery stores account for 33% of national sales and offer valuable, but untapped, media channels for suppliers to drive brand-building initiatives and product trial.”

Retailers open customers to targeted ads
Numerous retailers across verticals including grocery are directly partnering with CPG advertisers to deliver targeted ads to consumers as they make purchase decisions. For example, both Ahold Delhaize USA and Instacart are building out their existing retail media networks.

Peapod Digital Labs, the digital, e-commerce and commercial company of Ahold Delhaize USA, will grow its AD Retail Media network by building an end-to-end, in-house retail media business. With this move, Peapod Digital Labs will offer new strategic partnerships and expanded capabilities and shift to the CitrusAd retail media network platform, powered by Epsilon.

Meanwhile, Instacart is enhancing the ad buying experience in Ads Manager, the company’s self-service portal, as well as making shoppable video ads that combine immersive rich media creative with a set of in-line shoppable products available to all brand partners.

In addition, meal kit provider HelloFresh is also digitizing and streamlining its media partnership processes with Brandcrush technology. As a result, the company seeks to provide brands with efficient access to its consumer base via a single online portal. Leveraging the Brandcrush platform, HelloFresh can now perform media bookings, management, and reporting processes online.

[Read more: HelloFresh opens portal connecting advertisers to shoppers]