Asda has announced the appointment of SMG, the UK’s leading independent retail media operator, as its new Retail Media Network (RMN) partner. SMG will manage the retail media planning and retail media operations functions of Asda business.
Previously managed by GIG Retail for the past eight years, SMG’s appointment comes at an exciting time as Asda plans to expand its retail media network via more stores, new digital channels, and innovative propositions.
With 19.7M households in Britain shopping at Asda last year, with 80% of customers shopping both online and in-store and with a fast growing rewards programme, SMG will use Asda’s rich customer data to create targeted, insight-led, creative omnichannel campaigns helping brands reach the right audience through the right touchpoints whether that be social, digital, TV, or in-store.
SMG’s proprietary software product Plan-Apps – where £1M of media spend is already planned every day – will be embedded into Asda’s technology stack enabling a smooth end-to-end planning, management, and measurement cycle for campaigns. Complementing this, SMG’s centre of excellence combines creative thinking and precision planning with an in-depth market understanding and unrivalled retail media measurement capability.
Jon Beill, senior director, media & insight commercialisation, Asda, said: “This is an exciting time for Asda and the retail media industry, and we have decided to partner with SMG as we feel they can help propel Asda Media forward at a critical time for us. We have ambitious growth plans and are investing in creating a market leading retail media network. More to come on this in the next few months!”
Sam Knights, CEO at SMG, said: “We are delighted to be partnering with Asda to bring the SMG knowledge, expertise and technology together with the existing proposition, capabilities and talented team.
In our 15 years we have championed connected commerce marketing; forming better connections between the brand, the retailer, and the customer – an ideology that has become even more prevalent in today’s world.
The Asda brand and loyal customer base allows for a truly exciting opportunity to build a sophisticated and innovative retail media offering for brands and we can’t wait to get stuck in!”
The appointment will also see a large number of GIG Retail employees join SMG to continue to work on Asda Media.
As the teams come together and build a roadmap for 2024, this is the first step in a number of exciting changes that are planned for retail media and insights across the Asda group.
