Why Lowe’s is taking more of its retail media network in-house—and what it means for the category

One of advertising’s biggest growth stories of 2022 was the rise of retail media—and that trend is showing no signs of slowing down as marketers explore new ways to scale their businesses amid a challenging economic backdrop. Today, Lowe’s announced it will be bringing the advertising sales and operations departments of its One Roof Media Network in-house, effective Jan. 31. The announcement signifies the dissolution of the partnership with CitrusAd, the Epsilon-owned platform that, along with ad tech platform Criteo, helped the Mooresville, N.C.-based home improvement chain first launch its media network in 2021. “We saw this opportunity at the end of the year to bring this in-house and own the experience and make this all seamless for our brands,” said Abi Subramanian, VP and general manager of Lowe’s One Roof Media Network, who joined Lowe’s one year ago after working at Sam’s Club. He noted that CitrusAd’s role had been executing media programs and plans for brands, as well as the campaign performance. CitrusAd also served as a technology platform powering sponsored products for advertisers. Lowe’s will now handle such business internally. Criteo formerly served a similar function but will now solely serve as a technology platform for Lowe’s, he added. Ad Age events Sign up for events and awards Learn more here “Now they are purely our technology platform of choice to streamline all of the products’ execution,” Subramanian said. He declined to specify how many new hires Lowe’s has made to scale its media network, though he noted that the retailer is “staffing the business to meet the needs of our brand partners.” As retailers seek to streamline their partnerships and gain more profits from their burgeoning media businesses, experts expect that Lowe’s will not be the only brand taking things internally. Megan Cameron, VP of monetization for new stream media at Merkle, said in-housing is a rising trend for retail media networks, particularly from established retailers. Most brands are prioritizing easy-to-work-with relationships and having a strategic partner when they look for a retail media network partner, she said. “Owning more of the front-end teams and operations that bring this experience to life for brands enables retailers to have a closer relationship with their brand partners than if they outsource to technology partners,” Cameron added. Yet completely in-housing the media business is still rare. Many brands still have some external partners, and some are also expanding those relationships. Best Buy, for example, which was an early pioneer of retail media, recently grew its partnership with Criteo. “There’s always going to be a tension between partnering and going in-house,” said Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst of Insider Intelligence, noting that retailers “don’t want to cough up [retail media] profits especially in an environment where profits are harder and harder to come by as consumer spending gets constrained.” Related: 12 retail media network execs to know Of course, taking the business in-house requires additional staff and resources. “We will probably see other retailers experiment with this and some may succeed, but more likely they will run into issues because it’s not a core competency for many of these businesses,” Lipsman added. After first introducing One Roof Media Network two years ago, Lowe’s has grown it to include over 200 advertisers, all of which are endemic, selling products on the chain’s shelves. One Roof recently expanded into a connected TV, a big growth area for retail media, through a partnership with Yahoo, Subramanian said. Lowe’s is also expanding its social media partnerships and currently works with Pinterest. “We are building the ecosystem in such a way to deliver a richer commerce experience and drive traffic all back to Lowes.com,” he said.

Why Lowe’s is taking more of its retail media network in-house—and what it means for the category

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