Albertsons Puts Retail Media Under Merchandising in Restructuring

Albertsons is consolidating its internal departments, moving its retail media arm under its merchandising organization, the grocer said.

CMO Emily Turner will oversee the combined organization, according to the company. The change places the retail media business — a growing revenue and margin driver for grocery chains — inside the merchandising structure that manages vendor relationships and category decisions.

The move signals how Albertsons intends to run retail media: not as a standalone unit, but as a function tightly coupled with the merchandising decisions that shape what appears on shelves and in shopper marketing programs.

For retail media networks across the grocery sector, the structural question of where the business reports has grown more consequential as advertisers shift budgets toward in-store and digital grocery media. Folding retail media into merchandising can shorten the distance between vendor trade spend and media spend, giving suppliers a single point of contact across both.

Albertsons' consolidation follows broader efforts by the grocer to streamline its internal operations as it competes with larger rivals in grocery retail media.

The company did not disclose additional details on timing or further organizational changes in the announcement.