What? Wickes, the DIY chain, has created a retail media network, called Wickes Connected Retail Media.
How does it work? It uses Epsilon’s CoreID identity graph to help brands reach home improvers and trade professionals across Wickes’ own website and across the internet, more generally.
Wickes also says that it has been investing money to link its digital channels with its 230 stores, to make its retail media proposition even more enticing to brands, by promising to connect them with customers ‘at the moments that matter most’.
Is it really a ‘first-of-its-kind proposition in the home improvement category’, like it says in the press release? As ever, it depends how thinly you slice these things. US home improvement chain Lowe’s has had a retail media network for a while. Still, it’s a buoyant medium. EMarketer predicted that retail media spend in the UK would reach £4.2bn in 2025. Colin Lewis, founder of Retail MediaWorks, explained the appeal of the channel to marketers in an interview with MediaCat last year. He said retail is one of the only channels that can claim broad reach at a time when ‘the idea of broad reach is gradually collapsing’.