Commerce & Retail Media Market: Retail Marketing’s Future: First-Party Data

An ADWEEK House Cannes Lions panel co-hosted with Sam’s Club argued that retail marketing should prioritize first-party data and customer insights to build long-term relationships beyond immediate ROAS. Sam’s Club’s membership model — which requires members to scan an ID at checkout — creates persistent shopper signals that the retailer and brand partners can use to target and measure campaigns. P&G’s Jacques Hagopian described a Sam’s Club use case where first-party member data helped P&G identify 800,000 likely households for Cascade Platinum Plus, producing a reported 2X increase in marketing effectiveness. Panelists also highlighted AI and emerging “agentic” automation as tools to scale personalized, continuous retail experiences and to power more creative in‑store activations that convert to sales.