Dynamic partnerships and dynamite profits make for eye-grabbing headlines, but sometimes the biggest news is in the fine print. This week, TWIRM examines high-profile articles about Canada’s largest retailer and uncovers a major retail media story hiding in plain sight.
TWIRM, as everyone in-the-know knows, is the This Week in Retail Media podcast, hosted by Kate Dickson, Head of Marketing and Communications, Retail Media, STRATACACHE, and Jonathan Rosen, STRATACACHE’s Global EVP of Retail Media Strategy. Each week, Kate and Jonathan reach across the Atlantic to discuss three stories that excite them, intrigue them and even, sometimes, make them read between the proverbial “lines.”
This week, the top story is about Canadian retail giant Loblaws, which landed marquee headlines about a new partnership with Uber Eats and its stellar Q3 earnings. But what catches Kate and Jonathan’s attention is the little-trumpeted news that Loblaws’ advertising division is evolving into a major income source. The retailer just projected that its ad operations across 2,500 stores will rake in over $100 million CAD in EBIT next year, turning its physical store footprint into a powerful platform for advertising, media and data monetization.
Jonathan describes it as “a watershed moment” for Canadian grocery advertising. “If you’re a retailer, you can only mark products up so much. The key point of this story is that [retail media] gives you a much higher profit margin. That’s why everyone’s becoming a media company.”
From Loblaw’s projected ad windfall, Kate and Jonathan turn to beloved U.K. retailer John Lewis’s deployment of seven-meter-high digital billboards. Lastly, they unpack a new report that social media giant TikTok rejected 1.4 million seller applications on fraud suspicions.
Click here to hear Kate and Jonathan unpack why Loblaw’s surge in ad profits may shake up Canadian retailers’ revenue strategies.
