• by Laurie Sullivan , 8 hours ago

Albertsons Media Collective (The Collective), the retail media arm of Albertsons Companies, has moved into a new office in midtown Manhattan, with the goal to improve advertising services for brands and their agency partners.  

“We’re excited about this new chapter,” Brian Monahan, senior vice president and head of Albertsons Media Collective, told Media Daily News.

Monahan's experience in the agency sector at Dentsu, Pinterest, Walmart, Magna Global and other agencies puts him in a position to build out this new endeavor.

This approach marks a significant change for The Collective, placing it at the center of the advertising industry to enable closer collaboration with agencies and brands.

It gives the retail media network the ability to support brands through technical integration into agency systems such as media-planning tools, as well as sharing data to achieve better campaign performance. 

It also will enable The Collective to further educate the advertising industry on the Albertsons brand and technical retail media network expertise.

“We are building a couch-to-checkout canvas,” Monahan said. “Retail media gets pigeon-holed as lower funnel media, a way to express shopper marketing dollars.”

Monahan sees retail media as a full-funnel platform to reach across social, in stores, digital at home and other ways not imagined before. The Collective adheres to industry standards set by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), he says, and facilitates them across retail media.

The office’s proximity to Madison Avenue is expected to strengthen The Collective’s capabilities in developing industry standards and technology integrations.

Albertsons, the grocery umbrella, is not as widely recognized in Manhattan as other grocery store brands such as Wegmans, and Shop Rite. Those brands hold greater familiarity in the Eastern United States.

“The unique heritage of our 22 banners, 10 of which have been established for more than one hundred years, is not always fully appreciated by those newly engaging with retail media," Monahan says.

The Collective also launched a new “identity” with a three-leaf logo to emphasize “collective” growth. The three leaves on the logo represent advertisers, merchants, and shared customers.

As part of this shift, Monahan acknowledges the importance of expanding the number of metrics being used in retail media.

The Collective will focus on working more closely with advertising marketers at CPG companies, looking at the way synthetic controls are used to conduct testing and control true sales lift.

The Collective recently launched incrementality for in-store media where technology for the physical retail environment turns into networked media channels through sensor technology and content management techniques.

Physical stores have historically been a “black box” when it comes to data, metrics and attribution through APIs to help advertisers support campaign performance.