Ocado Ads has partnered with data collaboration platform Permutive to make its first-party purchase data available to select UK publishers.

• Future, Immediate Media, The Independent, and News UK are among the first publishers to integrate Ocado data via Permutive’s platform.
• The partnership lets them match their audience data with Ocado’s, enabling precise and privacy-safe targeting based on grocery shopping behavior.

“It’s very low lift from our perspective, but we generally are liberating out the power of first-party data,” said Jack Johnson, head of retail media and data at Ocado. “We’re allowing those publishers to tap into the power of retail, grocery, first-party data through the technology and partnership they have with Permutive.”

• Instead of requiring advertisers to use yet another platform, Ocado wants its data to flow into the tools and environments that buyers already use.
• “We’ll go where the media buying is already happening,” said Johnson. “We don’t want to create more fragmentation.”

Good timing: With the rise of generative AI and zero-click search experiences, publisher traffic and ad revenues face new headwinds.

This partnership addresses two immediate needs for publishers, said Johnson.

“One is they can attract brands and advertisers to that ecosystem… and they can sort of take advantage of all of the brand equity that comes with big advertising partners,” he said. “And there’s probably the other benefit, which is using this for more tailored, targeted campaigns.”

This is particularly useful for interest-based sites—like recipe or lifestyle publications—where Ocado’s grocery data could help deliver more relevant experiences.

“You might be searching for home baking or gifts, or you might be gluten-free, and we know that from your grocery shopping habits,” he explained. “If you can then map that into an experience on a foodie website, that’s a total game changer.”

A more direct path: As an online-only supermarket, Ocado owns about 15% of the UK’s online grocery space but just 2.5% of the total grocery market.That means Ocado must think differently than its larger competitors.

“We’re never going to be a retail media network that necessarily can bring people into our own platforms, especially for broader media spend, because, quite frankly, our scale isn’t there,” said Johnson. “So we’re looking to think about how we can remedy some of those challenges we’ve heard from advertisers.”

The result is a partnership model that avoids building another walled garden.

“We’re trying to not add to the fragmentation and actually liberate that data in a different way,” he said.

What’s ahead: While this launch focuses on publishers, it’s just one piece of a broader strategy to integrate Ocado’s audience data wherever advertising demand already exists.

• The company already partners with The Trade Desk and WPP’s media platform, with more integrations planned.

“Our direction of travel is that we’ll go where people already are—not adding more touchpoints for advertisers to connect with,” Johnson said.

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