• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, Yesterday

Albertsons Companies and its Media Collective retail ad network rolled out an innovative program this week. The company launched a grocery cashback rewards program that allows consumers to use points to book travel. It links to a travel booking platform, competing with third-party online agencies such as Google or Expedia. 

Email, SMS and messaging across channels tell consumers about the new service, supported by Experian, which turns grocery loyalty points into travel.

The experience, for U Travel, rewards consumers with cashback on airline flights, hotels and more when shopping for groceries at any of Albertsons' stores.

Loyalty programs complement performance media campaigns by supplying customer data that makes marketing more precise, cost-effective, and successful in driving high-value customer behavior, according to experts.

Instead of operating in isolation, the strategies work together to acquire new customers and retain existing ones with a higher return on investment (ROI). 

The travel site experience powered by Expedia allows Albertsons loyalty members to turn groceries into getaways by rewarding them with cashback on flights, hotels, car rentals and vacation packages.

Manjari Mehrotra, vice president of Loyalty for Albertsons, believes the program can help consumers save money on travel, and bring them back to the store to shop to continually earn points.

The website asks consumers to enter their email or phone number if they have shopped in one of the Albertsons stores to sign in. In this way, the company links the shopping points with the travel experience.

The experience could link to performance advertising through its retail media network, Albertsons Media Collective, by combining first-party customer data from the loyalty program with other advertising channels. It could then measure brand sales to show the specific products driving the travel program.

When I asked an Albertsons spokesperson to detail that part of the program, the company preferred not to explain.

Albertsons’ AI-powered, agentic consumer-facing feature, Ask AI, which launched earlier this month and was developed in collaboration with Google Cloud, will play a part in booking travel plans.

The Exped ia Group's 2025 Traveler Value Index found that 82% of consumers are interested in booking travel through a non-travel loyalty program.

The data is from a survey done with 1,000 consumers across 11 key markets, which provides insight into changes in traveler sentiment, behaviors, and booking preferences during the past few years.

About 82% of consumers are interested in booking travel through a non-travel loyalty program, according to Carolina Cabero Manrique, senior vice president of Private Label Solutions for Expedia Group.

Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Haggen and Balducci's Food Lovers Market are some of Albertsons Company brands.

The service is similar to the Kroger Plus Card program, which is focused on savings and fuel points, but instead it focuses on airline travel miles. While the fuel rewards don't directly convert to travel points, it can save consumers money at the gas pump.

When asked how Albertsons could use its program to support performance, Dave Struzzi, communications lead at Taboola, gave MediaPost an example. 

Albertsons can tap into display and even bigger network of publishers, apps and OEMs that include NBC News, Yahoo, Xiaomi, and Samsung. Of course, he referring to Taboola's network. This connects their brand with customers in high visibility locations on other publishers and apps to drive performance–in this case new users.

"Assuming Albertsons is already running social campaigns, they can easily use the same creatives from those to launch on Realize, [which is Taboola's platform]", he said.

Part of Realize is a feature called Social Importer that could let Albertsons pull content from its Instagram or Facebook feeds and deploy it in a display ad campaign. This allows Albertsons to repurpose its high-performing creatives, adding a more personal, authentic touch to every campaign without extra production work.

Then, on Wednesday I received an email from Perplexity inviting me to start using its AI browser, Comet. When I asked the browser how Albertsons could turn its new loyalty program into a performance strategy, this is how it replied. (If it works, thank Comet.)

Comet suggested using the loyalty program’s membership of more than 47 million in 2025, and a variety of digital touchpoints to gain and deliver to brands a variety of insights into consumer shopping behaviors. This would enable precise audience targeting for paid campaigns, both onsite and offsite Albertsons properties. 

Using retail media through the Albertsons Retail Media Collective, brands can use performance ads to reach loyalty members with hyper-relevant offers. It can all track ad exposure to actual purchases, measuring return on investments (ROI) at the SKU, category, or campaign level.

Rewards redemptions and program engagement data provide clear metrics for optimizing future ads, budgets, and creative.

Then use limited-time or personalized deal ads that tie directly into loyalty benefits (bonus points, exclusive coupons, or extra cashback on travel) to drive initial conversion and longer-term loyalty, creating a virtuous performance marketing cycle.