Kroger has consolidated its retail media, consumer insights, and loyalty marketing capabilities under the Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) brand.

• The initiative aims to improve coordination across the various stages of brand development, from product ideation to marketing execution.
• Brands now have access to coordinated planning, self-service execution tools, and data-driven support across the entire brand lifecycle—from innovation to media investment.

Why it matters: As consumer expectations grow and media fragmentation intensifies, brands are demanding more from retail media networks (RMNs).

“It’s really driven by the need for brands today to just be able to move faster,” said Brian Spencer, marketing director, KPM at 84.51°. “Purchase data is really powerful beyond traditional shopper marketing roles… in today’s environment, consumer habits are changing faster than ever. Brands just have more of a need than ever to be able to tap into retail purchase data to make data-driven decisions faster.”

By offering both media activation and deeper access to retail data for innovation, pricing, assortment planning, and loyalty, KPM solves a key industry pain point: Fragmented data and misaligned teams.

“You still need to have brand specialists, retail specialists, ecommerce specialists… but they should all be using the same data set across the organization, and this enables that,” said Spencer.

Self-service tools are another key pillar of KPM’s capabilities, giving marketers both flexibility and autonomy.

• KPM’s suite of offerings—from data dashboards like 84.51° Stratum to integrations with programmatic platforms like The Trade Desk—gives advertisers more control over analyzing, activating, and measuring their campaigns.
• The aim is to meet brands where they are—regardless of size or sophistication, said Spencer. “We’ve built out a lot of self-service capabilities, but we also have had to have tremendous managed service capabilities… a lot of the smaller brands in particular are really hungry for some of the managed service options.”

At the same time, loyalty is evolving from a transactional perk into a strategic lever for deeper engagement.

• With 95% of Kroger’s sales tied to loyalty accounts, the program is a rich data source and a foundation for inspiration-driven targeting.
• “Our data science has [enabled] 75% of on-site impressions [to] actually reach new households,” said Spencer. “It’s no longer strictly just about retargeting and getting the same thing. It truly becomes a mechanism for us to drive inspiration.”

Ultimately, KPM’s transformation signals a shift in what brands can—and should—expect from retail media.

“We believe that the broader digital media environment has not been served well by the race to the bottom with CPMs,” Spencer said. “There’s an opportunity for retailers to really become drivers in making media dollars work harder… across the whole system, from television to audio to every place else.”

This was originally featured in the Commerce Media Weekly newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.