Customer acquisition is becoming less about reaching the largest possible audience and more about reaching the right customer at the right moment – and that means looking at extending retail media into a range of channels, while maintaining a consistent understanding of customer identity.
Iceland shows the way here. The retailer’s enhanced retail media proposition now features offsite advertising, onsite video and auction-based buying, which together allow brands to engage Iceland shoppers across a much broader range of digital environments, while still linking activity back to verified retail audiences.
Rather than treating onsite and offsite advertising as separate activities, the objective is to create a more connected customer journey that reflects how consumers actually discover, research and purchase products today.
Consumers rarely rely on a single source of information before making purchases, with RetailX consumer survey data showing that search engines remain the most important starting point for product discovery, followed by retailer websites, customer reviews and recommendations from friends and family. At the same time, consumers consistently said they found promotional messages most useful when they appeared during active shopping journeys, whether through web searches, retailer websites or while browsing products online.
The challenge for marketers is therefore not simply extending campaign reach, but also coordinating it more intelligently. By combining Iceland’s first-party customer data with tech partner Epsilon’s people-based identity capabilities, advertisers can now begin to manage campaigns across onsite and offsite environments while maintaining greater consistency in who they reach and how often they communicate.
For Adam Smith, Head of Retail Media at Iceland Foods, expanding the network is about making retail media more accessible as well as more effective. “Our partnership with Epsilon is a big moment for us,” he says. “It ultimately gives our brand partners more choice, more channels and the ability to reach our customers in a smarter, more dynamic way.”
He continues: “It also means we can now open up our media to more types and sizes of brand advertisers. [This] is our latest commitment to providing a retail media platform that works for all brands and delivers value back to our shoppers.”
The emphasis on flexibility reflects broader changes taking place across retail media. As noted by IAB Europe, offsite retail media has become one of the fastest-growing areas of digital advertising, yet relatively few retail media networks currently offer advertisers the ability to activate audiences beyond their network’s websites and apps. By extending campaigns into display, video and CTV, retailers such as Iceland can maintain customer relationships throughout much longer purchase journeys while continuing to use first-party data as the foundation for audience targeting.
The addition of auction-based buying further reflects the growing maturity of retail media as a performance channel. Rather than offering fixed placements alone, Iceland’s platform allows brands to optimise investment dynamically, helping marketers direct budget towards audiences and environments delivering the strongest commercial outcomes.
For Tim Frankcom, President, Europe and APAC at Epsilon, the partnership is ultimately about making customer acquisition more accountable. “Iceland has a clear ambition to build a modern, inclusive retail media offer,” he says. “By adding offsite scale, launching new formats like video and introducing a flexible auction model, we’re helping unlock the full potential of people-based advertising. This gives brands a route to real people, not proxies, with measurable results across every touchpoint.”
For Iceland, expanding retail media beyond its own properties represents a move towards a more connected model of customer acquisition, one that recognises that today’s shoppers rarely remain within a single channel and that successful marketing depends on understanding the entire customer journey rather than individual touchpoints.
Learn more about how Iceland and other retailers are tackling the increasing complexity of finding new customers and building loyalty with retail media in the RetailX data workbench report Reliable forecasting from mixed signals
