Retail Media Age Editor-in-Chief Justin Pearse sat down with Dean Harris, Head of Co-op Media Network, to discuss the launch of Co-op Compass, the evolution of retail media, and how to balance commercial ambition with shopper experience. The following interview, conducted by Justin Pearse, explores the unique positioning of Co-op’s retail media offering and the broader shifts transforming the sector.
Co-op Compass launched recently, what makes it different?
We’ve launched Co-op Compass as our new data media product. A lot of retail media networks now have their own data propositions, Tesco with Tesco Media & Insight, Sainsbury’s with Nectar360, Boots with Audience360, and Asda with Asda Access. Ours is different because it’s convenience-first, both in terms of the audience and the advertiser experience.
We’ve aligned it tightly to the missions that define convenience, top-up, impulse, food-for-now, food-for-tonight, and we’ve made the activation process just as straightforward.
Brands don’t need to deal with pages of booking forms or endless back-and-forth. You choose a mission, select a category, define the relationship with your brand, and you’re live. It’s fast, easy, and removes the friction that’s often spoken about when working with retail media networks.
“We always say the shopper has to win. Their behavior has to change, which means you have to make their purchasing decisions easier and more beneficial.”
There’s an ongoing debate, can a supermarket truly be a media owner?
Retail media has evolved out of trade marketing, especially in the UK. Its original purpose was to catalyse promotions and launches in a very sales-conversion-focused way.
But now we’re seeing people assess these channels by traditional media metrics, reach, frequency, attention, and retail media is standing up well by those measures.
Think about it, if a grocery store had no tills or products but the same footfall and dwell time, would it still be considered a viable media channel? Yes, because it has millions of engaged viewers. Add contextual relevance, grocery ads seen during grocery missions, and that attention becomes even more valuable.
It’s the same reason why you notice gym ads when you’re thinking about joining a gym. Contextual relevance enhances retention and recall.
We’ve backed this up with data from partners like Lumen, showing strong attention metrics. Retail media is not just about short-term sales anymore. It’s proving to be a legitimate long-term brand-building tool.
What are the biggest tensions brands and retailers face as this shift accelerates?
On the advertiser side, the big tension is structural.
Retail media sits across multiple disciplines, brand, performance, trade, shopper, but isn’t fully owned by any of them. You might have a Global Head of Retail Media, but beneath that person sits a fragmented structure. Agencies are often split too, with different teams handling different parts of the plan.
Retailers face their own internal tensions, particularly around how trade and media budgets interact. There’s a lingering fear that media spend is cannibalising trade spend. But we’ve proven that’s not the case. Media investment is largely incremental and, in many cases, is driving greater ROI without reducing promotional activity. That’s helping change mindsets.
We’re also trying to reduce internal silos. You still see separate teams for e-commerce media, in-store media, and analytics, brands have to navigate all of them independently. There’s a need for a single front door. That’s something we’re working hard to solve.
“Retail media has broken the old frameworks of above-the-line and below-the-line, and that’s created silos that are holding brands back.”
The shopper is often left out of the retail media conversation, how are you ensuring their experience doesn’t suffer?
The shopper must always win.
If their experience degrades, their behavior won’t change, and you lose all the metrics that underpin your retail media value, reach, frequency, opportunity to buy. That’s why balancing brand activity with a clean, coherent shopper experience is key.
Retailers are understandably tempted by the high-margin revenue of media, but if you overload the store with branded activations, you risk damaging the retail experience. We’ve all seen those LinkedIn photos of stores with wall-to-wall branded bays, and it’s not a good look.
We believe media should enhance the shopper journey, not disrupt it. That’s why screens are so important to us. They give us agility, we can change ads based on the time of day or the weather, which is essential for convenience missions. Plus, they allow us to optimise, measure, and scale, just like digital media elsewhere.
“Saying no to ad revenue is hard in a low-margin business, but if you mess up the shopper experience, you risk losing everything your retail media business is built on.”
How is Co-op thinking about offsite media and omnichannel integration?
Offsite was slower to develop in the UK due to GDPR and data governance, but it’s picking up now. The appeal is obvious, you can use loyalty data to reach consumers across Instagram, YouTube, and beyond. But it’s also lower margin for the retailer because you don’t own the media channel.
That said, it allows us to scale. Brands were already using those channels, so it’s easier for them to integrate retail data into existing campaigns than to start from scratch with in-store activations.
As for omnichannel, the market is moving from multi-channel, where you activate separately in store and online, to a true omnichannel approach with shared targeting and measurement. That’s where we’re heading with Co-op Compass, one targeting source, one measurement framework, consistent touchpoints across all channels.
Finally, there’s growing scrutiny on how retailers use data. How is Co-op approaching this responsibly?
We’re in a unique position. Our members own the data, and they also own the business. That creates a huge accountability, our CEO is answerable to our members. So we have to be incredibly careful, transparent, and ethical in how we use that data.
We’ve set up data ethics forums, strong governance processes, and partner only with organisations we trust. It’s not just about compliance, it’s about building a retail media ecosystem that reflects our values.
And beyond compliance, we’re also thinking about brand and shopper experiences. Are we okay with competing brands targeting the same customer on the same day?
Should we cap contact frequency? These are the kinds of questions we’re asking, because if we get this wrong, we don’t just risk media revenue, we risk shopper trust and the integrity of the Co-op brand.
