RTS 2025 review: retail media is a fast growing opportunity says Tesco executive Tash Whitmey

“Retail media is a massive opportunity,” said Tash Whitmey, Managing Director at Tesco’s Retail Media unit, speaking at Retail Technology Show 2025 in London last week, as she provided a Pepsi case study.

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) clients, such as Pepsi, “what we used to call suppliers” get to advertise close to the point of purchase – and now to link to the retailer’s data-rich loyalty program-enhanced digital platform.

“It’s more effective than a TV advert,” explained Whitmey, as the immediacy helps sales growth, and the retailer has loyalty data as well that can tailor and measure results and contextual journeys, while providing lessons for in campaign tweaks, or for the longer-term future.  

The origins of retail media were in-store 25 years ago, on simple promotions and such like. But the advent of online, apps and data rich environments that can now be mined by AI tools mean that the opportunities it offers have exploded. CPG partners can collaborate on data, access closed loop measurement and get creative in their campaigns. 

Pepsi case study

Whitmey provided an example of a “full funnel” project they did last year with Pepsi to coincide with the 2024 Champions League final that was hosted at Wembley stadium in London, near to where they have a grocery store, so they could provide physical and contextual benefits to PepsiCo who sponsor football’s European Cup.  

“Tesco was able to prime the campaign by providing customers to Pepsi who were likely to be interested in football [using their data and relevant external sources] and put banners on websites or apps when these selected customers visited,” she explained, adding that the prompt stage was then activated by wrapping Pepsi branding all around the nearby store at Wembley for visiting fans - a first - and then amplifying this on social media. 

This is a relevance campaign example, where location was important. But you can do personalisation too. “When you search for crisps on Tesco.com, for example, the ads can be personalised [to the customer’s tastes and past shopping history].”   

Key promises of retail media

One of the key promises of retail media is its closed loop measurement capabilities, which is still evolving - along with the entire emerging field - admitted Whitmey. Other benefits in this nascent area that she detailed at RTS 2025 were:  

·       Return on ad spend: ROAS, which is a crucial marketing metric that measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, helping businesses to evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns. Retail media is great for providing this metric.  

·       Omnichannel: capabilities at retailers mean CPG clients, such as Pepsi, can link and track .com, display, sponsorships and in-store activation, among many other aspects of a multifaceted campaign.  

·       Incremental: ROAS is possible but also a broader incrementally, argued Whitmey. Retail media techniques make it possible to demonstrate the overall effectiveness for sales, brand adherence, likeability or whatever metric the client is interested in. The incremental benefit of wrapping campaigns around customers is also a more intangible benefit, but real enough.  

Big advertising agencies, such as Publicis, are starting to get involved in the retail media marketplace and to think about how they can use it, claimed Whitmey at the trade show in London, while warning that retailers themselves “haven’t got it right quite yet” as they are “not media experts… It’s a work in progress”

“Retailers are traditionally good at opening stores and getting stock on the shelves,” said Whitmey. But she knows the days of them doing that alone are long gone. “We also test for any impacts on customer experience (CX) before launching anything and have firm guardrails [around pricing etc] to ensure alignment with the core retailing business. We are only a media offshoot after all.” 

This CX focused policy at Tesco should hopefully mitigate consumers feeling bombarded or overwhelmed with the amount of digital admin they have to do, while protecting its over-arching brand.  

The power of connecting the 9.2 million app users of Tesco’s Clubcard loyalty programme, which launched 30 years ago, but has been updated more recently to maintain its relevance was also discussed at RTS 2025. Accessing that database is tempting for advertisers. For example, its four million users on its new personalised reward scheme and Clubcard Prices contextuality are all appealing.