Albertsons and P&G Reboot the Soap Opera for the Retail Media Age
CANNES, France — The company that invented the soap opera is now modernizing it for vertical video and grocery store screens.
Procter & Gamble has partnered with Albertsons Media Collective to launch “Rico’s Tacos,” an episodic branded entertainment series that debuted at Cannes Lions 2026. The 20-episode comedy follows a multigenerational Southern California family running a taco stand, with product integrations for P&G brands like Bounty and Head & Shoulders woven into storylines about grocery shopping occasions.
The project represents a deliberate attempt to expand retail media beyond “item and price bottom of the funnel advertising,” said Brian Monahan, SVP of Albertsons Media Collective, in a video interview with Beet.TV.
From shopper data to creative brief
The series originated not in a writers’ room but in a data meeting. Albertsons and P&G pooled their respective consumer and shopper insights to identify growth audiences and relevant use cases before developing any creative concepts.
“What manifested as the Rico’s Tacos show started in data,” Monahan said. “That led us to the idea of reaching a growth audience, that led us to the type of brands to bring into the project, that led us to the type of use cases to demonstrate in it. And that led to the creative brief which manifested in the creative container.”
Albertsons has developed a taxonomy of 25 different reasons why people go grocery shopping, from weekly shops to forgotten ingredients to rewarding treats. These occasions are embedded directly into the show’s storylines. One episode features a Taco Tuesday crisis when the family runs out of avocados; another shows the abuela treating herself to shampoo.
Measuring entertainment like advertising
The retailer plans to evaluate the series using the same incrementality methodology it applies to standard advertising. With 90% of Albertsons transactions authenticated via its loyalty program, the company can link exposure to purchases and measure lift.
“We’ll know if it drives sales the same way we know if any of the ads we present drive sales,” Monahan said. “We know what our customers buy, and we know what they were exposed to. So we’ll do that link, we’ll do our typical incremental test and control methodology to understand incremental lift.”
The in-store component will be particularly instructive. Albertsons is rolling out a smart screen network, launched in partnership with STRATACACHE, where snippets of the show will play with closed captions and QR codes. The company recently introduced in-store incrementality measurement specifically to prove causal impact of such campaigns.
Retail media’s entertainment future
The initiative arrives as U.S. omnichannel retail media is projected to generate $71.67 billion in 2026, according to eMarketer. Retailers are increasingly restructuring their media operations to integrate more closely with core business functions.
Monahan positioned Rico’s Tacos as an addition to existing retail media tactics rather than a replacement. “This is not the end all be all of how to drive growth through retail media,” he said. “This is an and. This sits on top of all the sponsored product ads and all the other ways that we can do item and price advertising.”
The response at Cannes suggested appetite for similar experiments. “We’ve had a lot of great conversations here at Cannes this week with other brands saying like, wow, I never thought of retail that way,” Monahan said.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from Cannes Lions 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
CANNES, France — The company that invented the soap opera is now modernizing it for vertical video and grocery store screens.
Procter & Gamble has partnered with Albertsons Media Collective to launch “Rico’s Tacos,” an episodic branded entertainment series that debuted at Cannes Lions 2026. The 20-episode comedy follows a multigenerational Southern California family running a taco stand, with product integrations for P&G brands like Bounty and Head & Shoulders woven into storylines about grocery shopping occasions.
The project represents a deliberate attempt to expand retail media beyond “item and price bottom of the funnel advertising,” said Brian Monahan, SVP of Albertsons Media Collective, in a video interview with Beet.TV.
From shopper data to creative brief
The series originated not in a writers’ room but in a data meeting. Albertsons and P&G pooled their respective consumer and shopper insights to identify growth audiences and relevant use cases before developing any creative concepts.
“What manifested as the Rico’s Tacos show started in data,” Monahan said. “That led us to the idea of reaching a growth audience, that led us to the type of brands to bring into the project, that led us to the type of use cases to demonstrate in it. And that led to the creative brief which manifested in the creative container.”
Albertsons has developed a taxonomy of 25 different reasons why people go grocery shopping, from weekly shops to forgotten ingredients to rewarding treats. These occasions are embedded directly into the show’s storylines. One episode features a Taco Tuesday crisis when the family runs out of avocados; another shows the abuela treating herself to shampoo.
Measuring entertainment like advertising
The retailer plans to evaluate the series using the same incrementality methodology it applies to standard advertising. With 90% of Albertsons transactions authenticated via its loyalty program, the company can link exposure to purchases and measure lift.
“We’ll know if it drives sales the same way we know if any of the ads we present drive sales,” Monahan said. “We know what our customers buy, and we know what they were exposed to. So we’ll do that link, we’ll do our typical incremental test and control methodology to understand incremental lift.”
The in-store component will be particularly instructive. Albertsons is rolling out a smart screen network, launched in partnership with STRATACACHE, where snippets of the show will play with closed captions and QR codes. The company recently introduced in-store incrementality measurement specifically to prove causal impact of such campaigns.
Retail media’s entertainment future
The initiative arrives as U.S. omnichannel retail media is projected to generate $71.67 billion in 2026, according to eMarketer. Retailers are increasingly restructuring their media operations to integrate more closely with core business functions.
Monahan positioned Rico’s Tacos as an addition to existing retail media tactics rather than a replacement. “This is not the end all be all of how to drive growth through retail media,” he said. “This is an and. This sits on top of all the sponsored product ads and all the other ways that we can do item and price advertising.”
The response at Cannes suggested appetite for similar experiments. “We’ve had a lot of great conversations here at Cannes this week with other brands saying like, wow, I never thought of retail that way,” Monahan said.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from Cannes Lions 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
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