Sainsbury’s new Nectar360 Pollen platform will supercharge its retail media business

J Sainsbury plc’s (Sainsbury’s) loyalty, insights and retail media business, Nectar360, has announced the upcoming launch of a new unified retail media platform: Nectar360 Pollen. Designed to solve for the industry’s biggest pain points and to support Nectar360’s mission to create valuable relationships between customers and their favourite brands.

Built in-house by Sainsbury’s and Nectar360 and co-created with partner brands and agencies, the proprietary platform is due to launch in late 2025 and will further advance Nectar360’s ambition to be a world-class leader in the growing retail media industry. It will redefine how the retail media sector works day-to-day, offering the easiest-to-use platform on the market, where brands and agencies are supported every step of the way by the Nectar360 team.

It combines audience insights, media planning and activation, optimisation and measurement into one single platform. Whether brands and agencies are running instore, online or offsite campaigns, Nectar360 Pollen will connect these environments in a truly omnichannel approach to retail media. Making running closed-loop retail media campaigns simple, seamless and always customer-first.

Generative AI will help brands and agencies optimise their campaign creative in the moment, build hyper-relevant audiences and plan media, simplifying the process and enabling Nectar360’s clients to get more effective campaigns live, quicker. A market-leading multi-touch attribution model and visualisation tool within the platform will also allow tracking and analysis of all media touchpoints, showing the impact of each channel on overall campaign performance. This means marketers and media professionals can optimise their campaigns faster and customers benefit from more relevant advertisements and an improved shopper experience.

Amir Rasekh, Managing Director at Nectar360, said: “Nectar360’s ambition is to be a world-class leader in the retail media industry, which is why we’re launching Nectar360 Pollen – the most advanced platform of its kind in the UK.

“Retail media’s exciting pace of growth is outstripping traditional advertising, but with this rapid development comes growing pains. While retail media has transformed how brands engage customers, it can be complicated and difficult to navigate. Taking on feedback from our clients and the market, we’ve created Nectar360 Pollen to help solve for this. It will allow brands and agencies to easily navigate the potential of retail media, create omnichannel experiences, and deliver enhanced measurement.”

Charlotte Murphy, Head of Digital Retail Media, Unilever UK, said: “Being part of the early test group for Nectar360 Pollen has been incredibly valuable. What sets this platform apart is how genuinely user-first it is. It seamlessly brings together all Nectar360’s media capabilities in one place and gives marketers the tools they’ve been asking for: simplicity, speed and smarter decision-making. It’s a real step change for how we plan and activate retail media.”

Harriet Perry, Chief Media & Partnerships Officer at OMG UK, said: “Nectar360 Pollen is redefining what’s possible in retail media, enabling us to unlock powerful insights, understand shopper behaviour across the entire customer journey, plan, book and measure campaigns in a unified, easy-to-use omnichannel platform. It will pioneer a new approach in media planning and measurement, allowing us to meaningfully move the needle for our clients.”

Nectar360 has continued its growth trajectory over the first 12 months of Next Level Sainsbury’s, Sainsbury’s three-year business plan; growing the Nectar partner coalition, scaling its digital retail media offering and launching insights capabilities. The launch of Nectar360 Pollen will take all of this to another level.

Also published in: The Drum