CANNES – In an advertising landscape flooded with more than 250 retail media networks, how will contenders stand out?
CVS’ own retail media division believes pairing online community conversation with purchase history can unlock high-intent moments with a “three dimensional” web of influence.
Its goal is to create a “win-win-win” for consumers, brands, and media partners by leveraging unique data and technology in tandem, said Paul Lentz, executive director and head of strategic development, CVS Media Exchange (CMX), in this dsicussion with Tameka Kee for Beet.TV at Cannes Lions.
The value of a win-win-win
For a retail media partnership to be strategic rather than merely transactional, it must deliver mutual benefit, according to Lentz. He said CMX’s goal is to bring valuable information to its customers to help them make better health and wellness decisions. This is achieved by finding where those customers are spending their time online and connecting them with relevant brands.
“That combination of our unique data set with either unique inventory, unique creatives, unique audiences, that’s really where it all comes together,” Lentz said.
He believes the way to stand apart in a crowded market—which eMarketer predicts will exceed $62 billion in US ad spend in 2025—is through the quality and depth of first-party data. “One of the strengths of our data set are our 90 million-plus ExtraCare users. The average tenure of our ExtraCare users is about 10 to 11 years. We’ve got a very rich, deep history of their buying behavior.”
This data becomes particularly powerful when trying to understand the modern customer journey, which is no longer a linear funnel. “Users are finding information or making their way to whatever their communities are, their interests are on connected TV. They are browsing the web, they have social channels, it’s not a linear path,” Lentz said.
Anonymity meets attribution
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A new partnership between CMX and Reddit exemplifies this strategy. The collaboration, which will launch a beta test in the fourth quarter of 2025, allows CMX to connect with users in high-intent moments, such as when they are discussing skincare or baby products within Reddit’s highly engaged, anonymous communities. The core of the partnership is linking those conversations to real-world sales.
“It’s a pretty deep tech stack,” Lentz explained. The process relies on data clean rooms to build audiences without exposing personal information. “It’s really the clean room technology that lets us link that anonymous participant, Redditor, with our known ExtraCare user at CVS. We’re not passing any sensitive information,” he said. This allows CMX to connect the dots from online exposure to offline purchase.
The power of this model, Lentz noted, is its ability to provide closed-loop attribution, a significant challenge for many advertisers. Because most CVS customers are brick-and-mortar shoppers, the loop is closed at the point of sale. “Over 95% of the transactions that we have happen in our stores,” he said. “Because so many users find value in ExtraCare, they swipe their card like 90% of the time. That way we have this closed-loop attribution that we can come back and say, ‘Here’s this Redditor… this is the products they actually purchased.’”
You’re watching “The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2025, presented by CVS Media Exchange” For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from Cannes Lion 2025. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
