Retail media is becoming a serious growth lever in both B2C and B2B, but most teams are still figuring out how to make it operational, measurable, and commercially credible.
In this article, you’ll see how Ahlsell and Kop & Kande approached that challenge, what made supplier marketing easier to prove internally, and what their experience suggests for teams trying to build a viable retail media model of their own.
At Ehandelskonferencen 2025, two retailers, Ahlsell and Kop & Kande, shared how they are turning supplier marketing into measurable retail media programs.
Watch the full presentation here below.
Ahlsell is a large B2B wholesaler with roughly DKK4 billion in revenue, where more than half of sales already happen through digital channels. Kop & Kande operates both physical stores and ecommerce and reaches over 600,000 loyalty members.
Both companies had high-intent traffic and strong supplier relationships, but lacked an effective way to activate supplier marketing in digital commerce.
Supplier marketing wasn't new to either company. Both had worked with suppliers on promotional activities for years. However, measuring impact was another matter. Results were hard to pin down, and retailers often had no clear way to prove whether the exposure actually drove sales.
As Søren from Ahlsell put it: "We've been doing marketing for our suppliers for a lot of years. But we also got the feeling that sometimes we were just the easy option. The cheapest place to advertise was with us – but the customers were buying from our competitors."
Introducing new products added another layer of difficulty. Customer buying behavior tends to default to familiar brands. Without targeted visibility, new products struggled to break into established categories regardless of how strong the supplier relationship was.
Internally, supplier agreements were often negotiated without ecommerce or marketing expertise on either side of the table. Søren says, "It's a huge problem for us. A deal gets negotiated and there's no marketing or ecommerce expertise in the room on either side." That gap made it harder to structure deals that could actually perform in a digital context.
Retail media offered a way to bring supplier marketing directly into the digital buying journey. Suppliers could gain visibility inside product discovery, in search results or category listings, while retailers could track the impact through clicks and purchases. The ability to show suppliers exactly how campaigns perform helped turn supplier marketing into a commercial initiative tied to sales.
That made it easier for retailers to prioritize supplier initiatives based on their contribution to sales, and for suppliers to understand what their investment actually delivered. As a result, supplier marketing became easier to structure, evaluate, and build on over time. Malene says, "your product is really, really good for this because the data is concrete and it's easy to prove."
Both companies were clear that the key to launching retail media was resisting the urge to build something complex from day one. They started with small experiments and a handful of trusted suppliers, keeping operational processes deliberately simple. Sometimes that meant managing things through spreadsheets while figuring out what worked. As Malene said: "Just get started. Try it out."
Sponsored placements only appear where they're relevant to what the customer is already looking for. A shopper browsing power tools isn't served safety gloves out of nowhere. That contextual fit is built into how the product works, which means retail media supports the buying journey rather than interrupting it.
As campaigns ran, both retailers saw results quickly. They could now see when users clicked sponsored products and whether those interactions led to purchases, and report clear performance data back to suppliers. What previously looked like marketing spend was increasingly becoming a sales-driven collaboration.
Ahlsell also observed an unexpected side effect: retail media campaigns improved organic product rankings even after campaigns ended. "When we've run a campaign, we actually see up to a 20% organic lift in rankings afterward." That strengthened the business case on both sides.
For both companies, retail media has moved well past the experiment phase. Supplier marketing is shifting closer to the point of purchase, where every campaign ties directly to sales performance and the value to suppliers is easy to demonstrate.
What started as a few test campaigns is now a core part of how Ahlsell and Kop & Kande work with suppliers, giving them a way to monetize their digital shelf space while suppliers get measurable visibility where customers actually buy. The fact that two companies with very different business models got there reinforces how broadly retail media applies.