В 2023, Ocado—a leading UK online grocer—launched a comprehensive offsite retail media strategy designed to extend its advertising reach for partner brands far beyond its own platform. This approach leverages Ocado’s robust first-party, purchase-based audience data, enabling targeted activation across high-impact digital channels such as connected TV (CTV) and digital out-of-home (DOOH). A critical component of this transformation is Ocado’s partnership with The Trade Desk, which facilitates cross-channel campaign optimization and closed-loop attribution, directly linking media spend with grocery sales outcomes.
A notable feature of Ocado’s offsite initiatives involves close collaboration with major UK publishers, including Future plc, Immediate, The Independent, and News UK. These collaborations integrate Ocado’s real-time purchase signals with the publishers’ proprietary audience data to construct high-intent, actionable audience segments. These segments can be directly activated within premium publishers’ digital environments—sites and apps—allowing for sophisticated, context-aware marketing that aligns brand messaging with consumers’ current purchase intent. Launch partners have reported not only stronger sales but also improved ROI, underscoring the efficacy of combining proprietary retailer data with mainstream media inventory.
Ocado’s “go-where-the-buying-is” strategy is engineered to minimize fragmentation for advertisers: its data capabilities are embedded into environments, such as demand-side platforms (DSPs) and agency systems, that buyers already use. This seamless interoperability stands in contrast to the walled-garden approach of many retail media networks, as Ocado aims to provide self-service, clean-room environments that give advertisers control while maintaining privacy and compliance standards. For a purely digital grocery player with no physical stores, maximizing the variety and fluidity of data utilization is a key differentiator—an approach reflected in its positioning as an agile, test-and-learn retail media network.
Significance for E-Commerce Ecosystem
Ocado’s strategic developments in offsite retail media resonate strongly with several evolving trends in e-commerce and content automation.
Impact on Product Feeds and Catalogue Standards
By expanding the data activation layer to offsite environments and premium publishing networks, Ocado effectively raises the bar for product data quality and standardization. For campaign targeting to function seamlessly across both Ocado’s site and partner sites, product feeds must be consistently structured, containing comprehensive metadata and standardized attributes. This cross-environment interoperability prompts retailers and brands to invest further in product feed reliability, precise categorization, and enrichment. The ability to link purchase outcomes to specific advertising and content exposures directly incentivizes tighter integration between media and e-commerce catalogue infrastructure.
Quality and Completeness of Product Cards
Ocado’s model depends on real-time, high-quality first-party purchase data flowing into audience targeting and campaign measurement systems. The accuracy and depth of product cards—content-rich digital representations of SKUs—are critical. As advertisers activate audiences both onsite and offsite, granular attributes (such as dietary details, sustainability badges, or special offers) become necessary for precise segmentation and compelling creative. This trend accelerates the industry’s push toward richer product cards, enhancing customer experience at the point of discovery and increasing conversion rates across owned and earned channels.
Speed of Assortment Launch
The test-and-learn ethos of Ocado Ads—exemplified by rapid A/B testing and the use of tools like the NPD Lab—translates into faster NPD (new product development) cycles and more agile assortment launches. By giving brands the ability to instantly target high-intent segments offsite and validate creative variations in real time, Ocado shortens the go-to-market timeline for new products. The closed-loop measurement provides swift feedback, allowing iterative optimization of product positioning, messaging, and placement.
Use of No-Code and AI Solutions
Ocado’s infrastructure emphasizes self-serve capabilities and accessible analytics, which are underpinned by the latest trends in no-code workflow tools and AI-driven insights. The Ocado Ads Manager and its integration with platforms like Beet for insights and measurement empower marketers, including those without deep technical skills, to build, launch, and refine campaigns. AI supports audience segmentation, creative targeting, and outcome prediction—enabling automation at scale while preserving the ability to customize and optimize content on-the-fly.
Broader Market Trends and Data Points
Retail media, and particularly offsite solutions, are seeing explosive growth in the UK. According to eMarketer projections, retail media ad spend will reach more than £3.2 billion in 2025, with the sector expected to double by 2027. The need for solutions that transcend platform silos is driving demand for interoperable, data-driven media networks such as Ocado Ads. The integration of retail data with publisher inventory—facilitated by privacy-preserving clean-room environments—reflects a broader industry shift toward the responsible use of consumer data for marketing optimization, while avoiding the pitfalls of walled gardens.
Case studies published in 2025 highlight the tangible impact of Ocado’s approach. For instance, FMCG brands have reported ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) several times higher than traditional baseline campaigns when leveraging audience targeting rooted in purchase data and closed-loop sales attribution. Smaller brands reported average ROAS uplift of 300–400% from offsite sponsored placements, illustrating the potency of granular, data-reinforced audience activation for both brand and performance objectives.
Industry Implications
Ocado’s offsite strategy serves as evidence of a shift in how digitally native retail platforms perceive their role within the broader advertising and e-commerce infrastructure. Rather than confining their value proposition to their owned environments, their interoperable, offsite data-driven models enable brands to influence buyers wherever they are—across the open web, publisher properties, and connected television. This both increases the efficiency of marketing spend and tightens the feedback loop between advertising, content, and commerce.
For brands and agencies, engaging with networks that offer such flexibility reduces operational friction, accelerates campaign launches, and supports sophisticated, outcomes-based optimization. For the broader ecosystem, the focus on first-party data, catalogue completeness, and AI-driven workflow automation points to a future where e-commerce and media are increasingly fused, with standardized, high-quality content and rapid assortment updates ensuring product availability and discoverability wherever the consumer journey begins.
Further reading and verification of industry trends can be found through comprehensive analyses such as the Ocado Ads State of Search Report 2025 and Econsultancy’s coverage of retail media trends, which contextualize these developments within the rapidly evolving digital commerce landscape. The discussion about data quality and standardization also sheds light on the importance of data integration. The ability to link purchase outcomes to specific advertising and content exposures directly incentivizes tighter integration between media and e-commerce catalogue infrastructure. This highlights the growing need for robust product information management (PIM) solutions, such as NotPIM, which can facilitate efficient data transformation, enrichment, and cross-channel optimization, directly supporting the success of offsite advertising initiatives like Ocado's. The accuracy and depth of product cards—content-rich digital representations of SKUs—are critical. By giving brands the ability to instantly target high-intent segments offsite and validate creative variations in real time, Ocado shortens the go-to-market timeline for new products.