Iceland expands retail media with offsite ads, video and auction buying
Iceland has added three new capabilities—offsite advertising, onsite video and auction-based buying—to its retail media platform. The expansion lets brands target Iceland shoppers across more digital environments while using first‑party data to keep audience targeting consistent.
By partnering with Epsilon, Iceland combines its own shopper data with the vendor’s people‑based identity technology to enable coordinated onsite and offsite campaigns. Auction‑based buying lets brands bid for placements in real time, directing budget toward the audiences and environments that deliver the strongest commercial outcomes. Offsite activity now extends into display, video and connected TV, allowing advertisers to stay connected with shoppers throughout longer purchase process.
“It also means we can now open up our media to more types and sizes of brand advertisers. [This] is our latest commitment to providing a retail media platform that works for all brands and delivers value back to our shoppers,” Adam Smith, Head of Retail Media at Iceland Foods said.
“By adding offsite scale, launching new formats like video and introducing a flexible auction model, we’re helping unlock the full potential of people-based advertising. This gives brands a route to real people, not proxies, with measurable results across every touchpoint,” Tim Frankcom, President, Europe and APAC at Epsilon said.
Customer acquisition is shifting from broad reach to targeting the right customer at the right moment, prompting retailers to extend retail media across multiple channels while keeping a consistent view of shopper identity. IAB Europe notes that offsite retail media is one of the fastest‑growing digital ad categories, but few networks let advertisers activate audiences beyond their own sites and apps.
What we know
The retailer’s enhanced retail media proposition now features offsite advertising, onsite video and auction-based buying, which together allow brands to engage Iceland shoppers across a much broader range of digital environments, while still linking activity back to verified retail audiences.
By combining Iceland’s first-party customer data with tech partner Epsilon’s people-based identity capabilities, advertisers can now begin to manage campaigns across onsite and offsite environments while maintaining greater consistency in who they reach and how often they communicate.
As noted by IAB Europe, offsite retail media has become one of the fastest-growing areas of digital advertising, yet relatively few retail media networks currently offer advertisers the ability to activate audiences beyond their network’s websites and apps.
Consumers rarely rely on a single source of information before making purchases, with RetailX consumer survey data showing that search engines remain the most important starting point for product discovery, followed by retailer websites, customer reviews and recommendations from friends and family.