Brian Monahan has left Albertsons Media Collective after just over a year leading the grocery chain’s retail media business. The departure is effective immediately, and the unit now reports to Albertsons CMO Emily Turner, who in turn reports to Michelle Larson, EVP and chief merchandising officer.
Business partners were told of the move on Friday, and Albertsons confirmed the change through a spokesperson. The company has not said whether the senior VP role will be refilled, or why the retail media business is being folded into the marketing organisation.
A pivotal year cut short
Monahan joined from Dentsu, where he was head of retail media solutions, and had earlier led retail vertical strategy at Pinterest. Under his leadership, Albertsons launched two visible retail media initiatives:
- Retail Media Incrementality-Based Multi-Touch Attribution, a measurement solution aimed at proving sales lift.
- A scripted branded entertainment offering to expand beyond standard ad formats.
A company spokesperson credited Monahan with helping build the unit into “an important and growing part of our business.”
Those launches matter because retail media buyers now want proof of marginal return, not just audience reach. The measurement product is an attempt to sell on evidence, which is the right move as CMOs face pressure to justify every retail media dollar.
The long-tail retail media signal
Agency executives quoted by Digiday said they do not expect immediate changes in client ad spend. But they see the exit as a sign of a broader crossroads for smaller and mid-sized retail media networks.
- One executive said the RMN side “hasn’t grown at the pace they had hoped.”
- Another said the business does not appear to have reached the scale it was aiming for.
Albertsons’ latest results give that pressure context: digital sales increased by 13%, while identical sales decreased by 0.8%. The media business is described as a bright spot, but the grocer does not break out separate income for Albertsons Media Collective.
What marketers should do
For brands, a leadership exit at a retail media network is not an automatic reason to move budget. It is a reason to review fundamentals: scale, first-party data quality, measurement rigour and proof of incremental return.
- Ask for incrementality evidence, not just clicks or closed-loop sales.
- Watch whether the network keeps investing in measurement and creative formats.
- Treat a leadership reset as a negotiation moment for test budgets, not a cue to pull spend blindly.
The next move from Albertsons will show whether it plans to run media as a standalone growth engine or as a support function inside merchandising.
Source: Digiday
