The trend: Cannes Lions 2025 made it clear that retail media is no longer limited to an ecommerce site or retailer app. New collaborations with social media platforms are expanding the audience—and expanding the data possibilities. CVS and Reddit announced a data clean room partnership at the festival that enables CVS advertisers to target Reddit users using shared first-party data.

Pinterest and Instacart announced a partnership that will allow Pinterest advertisers to target Instacart users and eventually use closed-loop attribution to connect ad exposure to product sales.

How CVS is tapping social:

• In Q4, CVS will launch a Haleon campaign to promote Sensodyne and Advil as part of a beta test of its Reddit integration.
• Alongside health-related conversations in Reddit communities, promoted posts and conversation ads will show up, fusing user-generated content with commerce.
• Reddit CRO Mike Romoff presented the partnership as combining "community intent" with actual retail access, while CVS VP Parbinder Dhariwal stated that the objective is to incorporate messaging into "organic discovery environments."

How Instacart is tapping social:

• Through the partnership between Pinterest and Instacart, customers can shop straight from Pinterest pins with Instacart's almost instantaneous fulfillment.
• Advertisers on Pinterest will first target audiences based on their previous Instacart purchase behavior; later stages will link exposure to actual purchases.

Zooming out: Beyond Cannes announcements, Meta has been going after retail media budgets as well through more commerce-forward ads.