The new stand-alone media business, called Cartology, was announced in a statement to the ASX late on Monday (18 March), which the retailer said “will ensure new and existing Woolworths customers are being engaged with more timely offers and content from suppliers via the group’s owned media assets”.
“At Woolworths, we know in order to continue to grow our business in the future, we need to better connect our customers in a relevant and engaging way with our brands and the products we sell,” Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci said in the statement.
“We’ve been watching closely how other large-scale retail businesses internationally are better engaging customers along the path to purchase. Many are now leveraging new digital and data technologies to become major media businesses in their own right.”
Mr Banducci said that Cartology would make use of the almost 1 billion searches made on the group’s various websites each year to better engage directly with customers.
“Cartology has been established to provide a more streamlined approach for suppliers to better communicate to customers via our in-store, digital and other media assets,” he said.
“It’s an exciting time for our partnerships and we look forward to working closely with suppliers and industry as we launch the business and further innovate the retail media landscape in Australia.”
Woolworths said that Cartology’s operations will gradually replace those of its existing media sales models across the group.