On March 23, 2026, Kroger Precision Marketing announced a new collaboration with Google’s Display & Video 360. The deal lets advertisers use Kroger’s purchase-based audience signals to target people on YouTube, third-party video inventory, and even YouTube TV. Kroger also says this is the first time advertisers can get SKU-level retail conversion reporting for YouTube through Display & Video 360, so brands can see whether a video ad helped sell a specific product at Kroger. (krogerprecisionmarketing.com)
This matters because Google has been steadily turning YouTube into a stronger shopping and advertising platform. In May 2025, Google said Display & Video 360 would bring commerce and retail media to YouTube, allowing brands to use commerce audience insights and measure sales impact in partners’ stores. Then, in June 2025, Google formally launched its Commerce Media suite in beta. Kroger’s March 2026 move shows that this plan is no longer just a promise: retailer data is now being connected directly to YouTube campaigns. (blog.google)
Kroger is a strong partner for this trend because it has rich shopping data. Kroger says its media business, KPM, is powered by 84.51° data science and its loyalty program, and is designed to “close the loop” between ad exposure and store sales. The company also says it serves more than 11 million customers daily. In simple terms, Kroger knows a lot about what people actually buy, and that makes its data valuable in a world where advertisers want proof, not just views or clicks. (krogerprecisionmarketing.com)
The bigger story is competition. Commerce media is growing fast because it uses first-party shopping data across websites, stores, and off-site ads. IAB expects U.S. retail commerce media ad spending to reach about $74.06 billion in 2026, even as the industry struggles with fragmentation and a lack of standard standards. Kroger is clearly trying to move faster: in 2025 it unified its media, insights, and loyalty services, expanded managed off-site audio and CTV ads, and opened self-service audience activation on Meta. Now, with Google and YouTube in the mix, the race to own the future of “commerce media” is getting even more serious. (mediapost.com)










