Retail Media for E-Grocery: Strategy, Solutions & Examples

Retail media  one of the most effective ways for grocers to grow revenue and help brands sell more at the digital shelf.

By turning your ecommerce storefront into a high-performing ad channel, you can capture new income streams, boost product visibility, and create a better shopping experience for customers.

For grocery ecommerce managers, the opportunity is clear: launch a retail media program that drives measurable sales for brands while generating profit for your business.

In this post, we’ll break down what retail media means for grocery ecommerce, the strategies and formats driving growth, examples from leading players, and how Wave Grocery helps grocers monetize their digital storefronts with scalable, revenue-focused retail media solutions.

What is retail media in grocery ecommerce?

Retail media is essentially when a retailer monetizes its owned assets, website, app, or even in-store screens, by allowing brands to advertise to shoppers.

For e-grocery, that includes:

• On-site media: Sponsored listings, banners, carousels, and video ads within your ecommerce storefront or mobile app.
• Offsite media: Ads run on social media, connected TV, or other third-party platforms, but targeted using your shopper data.
• In-store media: Digital displays, audio ads, or sampling within physical supermarkets, tied back to online shopper profiles.

The value for advertisers is clear: they get high-intent audiences at the point of purchase, plus closed-loop attribution linking ads directly to transactions.

Grocers already optimize shelf space with tools like planograms; retail media takes this one step further by monetizing digital shelves with sponsored placements

Why retail media is growing so quickly

Several forces are fueling adoption in grocery retail:

• Advertiser demand for performance: Retail media delivers ROI by connecting impressions directly to SKU-level sales.
• Loss of third-party cookies: As traditional targeting methods fade, first-party shopper data becomes the gold standard.
• New, high-margin revenue for grocers: Unlike traditional grocery product sales, which often run on slim margins, retail media lets grocers earn advertising dollars directly from brands.
• Every sponsored product, banner, or search ad on your digital storefront creates an extra profit stream, without raising prices for shoppers, complementing your core pricing strategies without increasing basket prices

Yet the space is crowded. With over 200 retail media networks launched in recent years, advertisers are pushing back against fragmentation, 56% say they want to work with only 5–10 partners.

This means not every network will succeed. Differentiation is key.

What makes a stand-out grocery retail media network?

A successful retail media program isn’t just about offering ads, it’s about building a network that advertisers trust and shoppers actually engage with. As a grocer, here’s what you need to ensure across your channels:

1. Your website & app (owned media)
   • This is your foundation. You control the shopper traffic here, and advertisers value it highly because customers are already filling carts.
   • Make sure your site supports sponsored search, product carousels, banners, and other placements that feel natural in the shopping journey. Sponsored placements should align with demand signals and your assortment planning, so ads enhance discovery rather than distract from it
2. Offsite media (often run with agencies/partners)
   • This extends your audience reach beyond your own site, using your first-party data to target shoppers across social, display, and connected TV.
   • As a grocer, you don’t need to run these campaigns yourself, but you should provide clean, high-quality data and work with an agency/tech partner that can activate it effectively.
3. In-store media
   • Digital signage, kiosks, and even printed shelf tags can be monetized as part of your retail media network.
   • Typically, agencies manage execution, but you control the shopper environment. Your role is to ensure placements fit the store flow and enhance, without disrupting the customer experience.

The grocer’s job is to own the data and digital storefront, then partner wisely for offsite and in-store activations. The most successful networks combine these channels so advertisers see one unified platform — not a fragmented set of buys.

Retail media formats for grocery ecommerce

Some of the most effective retail media formats in grocery include:

• Sponsored Listings: Brand-funded placements in search results or category pages. (Think: a cereal brand paying to be at the top of the “breakfast” category.)
• Native Banners & Carousels: Contextual ads on homepages, deal pages, or checkout screens.
• Shoppable Video: Engaging video ads embedded into digital shelves or category pages.
• Digital In-Store Media: Screens at checkout, aisle ends, or shelf-edge digital tags tied to online campaigns. When tied to online IDs and POS, these programs can also support tighter controls that help reduce shrinkage.
• Offsite Targeting: Using loyalty and order history data to run highly targeted campaigns on Facebook, TikTok, or CTV.

These placements not only unlock new revenue for grocers but also help brands drive conversion at the digital shelf, which is increasingly the most crucial battleground.

Build vs. Buy: How to launch a grocery retail media program

Grocery ecommerce teams face a choice:

• Out-of-the-Box Solutions: Fast to launch, bring advertiser demand, but limited in customization and control.
• Build From Scratch: Full control, first-party data integration, and differentiation, but requires significant investment and long lead times. Your decision often overlaps with broader product choices, like whether to build your grocery ecommerce app in-house or adopt a platform.
• Hybrid or Retail Media Cloud Approaches: Mix of customization with pre-built infrastructure, offering speed plus flexibility.

Wave Grocery’s role in grocery retail media

Wave Grocery gives grocers the website and app infrastructure that’s built for monetization from day one.

Our platform ensures your digital storefront is “retail media ready,” so you can plug in ad tech partners and start generating revenue immediately.

Here’s what that means in practice:

• Onsite media (our focus): Your Wave Grocery site and app support sponsored product listings, banners, and promotional carousels that integrate seamlessly into the shopping journey.
• First-party data foundations: We structure and surface loyalty, basket, and order history data in a way that makes it easy for your ad tech or agency partners to activate.
• Automation-ready operations: Connect ad placements to pricing, stock, and promotions with practical retail automation strategies that keep campaigns aligned with real inventory and store workflows.
• Easy partner integration: You control your storefront; we make sure it’s compatible with the retail media tools you choose.

Put simply: Wave Grocery powers the onsite retail media channel. Offsite and in-store activations are typically run by your agency or ad-tech partners, but without an ad-ready website and app, none of it scales.

Key takeaways for grocery ecommerce managers

• Retail media is one of the fastest-growing ad channels, and grocery is uniquely positioned to win due to rich first-party data and purchase intent.
• Differentiation matters; advertisers don’t want dozens of fragmented buying hubs.
• Success in grocery retail media requires the right formats, effective audience segmentation, and swift execution.
• Wave Grocery provides the technology and strategy to help grocers launch and scale profitable retail media networks tailored to grocery ecommerce.

Ready to unlock retail media revenue?

Retail media is transforming grocery ecommerce, and the grocers who move first will capture the greatest share of ad spend. With Wave Grocery, you can launch a scalable, differentiated retail media network in weeks, not years.

👉 Contact us today to see how Wave Grocery can help you monetize your digital shelf, attract brand advertisers, and create a new revenue stream for your business.