Valiuz launches its retail media agency in partnership with Auchan and Boulanger - Data Strategy > Data

On the occasion of Paris Retail Week, on September 21, data player Valiuz announced the launch of its retail media agency, operational on January 1, 2024, in partnership with the Auchan and Boulanger brands. His name: Valiuz Adz.

A fundamental trend for two years already in France, retail media – as a reminder all the advertising offers offered by distribution brands and marketplaces, and based on their transactional data, to brands and their agencies – never ends not to arouse enthusiasm in the marketing world. And for good reason: in 2022, retail media will experience growth of around 30%. And it would not weigh less than 498 million euros in the first half of 2023 in France, according to the e-pub Observatory. It is in this context that the data player Valiuz announced, on September 21, the launch of its retail media agency, “Valiuz Adz”. Special feature: this new offer on the retail media market was designed in partnership with two brands, Auchan and Boulanger, thus aiming to be as close as possible to the concerns of retailers. The offers from this agency will be operational on January 1, 2024.

A data and technological base

What is the strength of this project? The actor who runs the retail media agency, Valiuz, is a data alliance which brings together nineteen member brands of the Mulliez Family Association (AFM), including Auchan, Boulanger, Décathlon, Kiabi, Norauto and, even, Leroy Merlin. With transaction information from 4,000 stores with 55 million unique customers (80% of French households, according to the alliance), Valiuz has an unprecedented data base and strong customer knowledge. “The creation of Valiuz corresponded to the need to respond to the many challenges of retailers, around omnichannel, digitalization, data at the service of businesses and the performance and sustainability of business models”comments Sébastien Zecchini, CEO of Valiuz, during the Valiuz Adz launch conference at Paris Retail Week.

It is thanks to this data and technological base that Valiuz Adz intends to meet market expectations, by simplifying access to data and inventories – one of the major challenges for brands and retailers, as highlighted by Sofia Liévin, retail media director of Auchan Retail France, during this same conference. “We must simplify access to retail media and make it accessible to both large companies and SMEsshe argued. Beyond their search for performance, brands expect simplification, platformization, professionalization of measurement and above all massification.” This is what Valiuz Adz intends to do by positioning itself as the preferred contact to orchestrate all of a brand’s retail media systems and by facilitating interactions between brands, their media agencies and distributors.

Read also: A look back at the first steps of the retail media agency shared by But and Conforama

A multi-brand retail media agency

It is the positioning of an integrated omni-channel and multi-brand management which marks the difference – and probably the strength – of this retail media project. From January 1, 2024, Auchan and Boulanger will therefore entrust their entire retail media activities to Valiuz Adz. Two other brands should join the project by the end of 2023.

“Even if retail media presents itself as a sustainable market worth several billion euros and there are already some big players, we are only at the beginning of the story and it is up to us to make the effort of platformization, simplification in access to our offers, operation of managed or self-service campaigns up to, of course, access to measurement”, explains Olivier Boutin, retail media director of Valiuz. And to add: “The promise of Valiuz Adz is to offer a platform combining customer knowledge and multi-channel activation solutions ranging from branding to conversion. Our challenge is to enable our distributors, advertisers and agencies to re-engage in conversation with their consumers by measuring performance throughout their purchasing journey.”

Concretely, Valiuz Adz offers a complete range of activation and measurement offers across all channels, in particular through partnerships with other providers: Imediacenter (retail media agency of Auchan and Nhood, real estate company of the Auchan group) for DOOH, Catalina for couponing or Mediaperformances for in-store activation.

Sofia Liévin, Retail Media Director at Auchan, said “seduced) by Valiuz’s proposal to capitalize on an already existing and proven data alliance to build a powerful retail media agency that can place itself among the main players in this structuring market.” The stakes are gigantic for Auchan Retail: “We hope to triple our retail media revenues by 2026, and multiply them by 10 in 2030“confides Sofia Liévin.