Retail media has grown by reaching shoppers at the moment of intent: on the search bar, on the category page, at the digital shelf. But discovery is evolving, and consumers are now turning to new AI-powered experiences to explore products, compare options, and make decisions. And that creates new surfaces for retail media.
If there’s any doubt about the shift, our recent research confirms growing adoption, with more than 8 in 10 shoppers saying they’ve already used AI for shopping purposes. This raises an important question for every retailer and brand: are you showing up where discovery is now taking place?
Today, we’re excited to share that through our partnership with Albertsons Companies, the answer to that question can now be “yes”. Criteo’s Sponsored Products are now live within Albertsons Cos. AI-powered conversational search, enabling brands to reach shoppers during AI-driven discovery moments. This is an important step in extending retail media into AI-powered shopping experiences, creating new value for retailers and new visibility for brands.
Albertsons Cos. leads the way with AI-powered conversational search
Albertsons Cos. has been an early mover in AI-powered shopping, embedding conversational tools into its apps and websites to make it easier for shoppers to discover products, plan meals, and build their baskets. Early data from their AI-powered conversational search reinforce just how valuable this surface is for brands: 85% of conversions begin with broad or open-ended prompts, with shoppers frequently adding incremental items to their cart. These shoppers are in discovery mode, open to guidance, and ready to be influenced by relevant recommendations. The results prove it: AI-powered conversational search already delivers a 10% increase in basket size for customers who use it.
Now, that experience has a new dimension. Criteo’s Sponsored Products are integrated directly into Albertsons Cos.’ AI-powered conversational search, enabling sponsored and organic product recommendations to appear together within the same conversational flow. Albertsons Cos. is one of the first retailers to activate this capability, establishing a blueprint for how AI-powered shopping assistants can blend discovery and monetization without compromising the shopper experience.
“AI is reshaping how shoppers discover products, moving discovery from search boxes and category pages into conversations. That shift creates a new opportunity for retailers and brands to engage consumers earlier in the decision-making process,” said Sherry Smith, President of Retail Media at Criteo. “With Albertsons Cos., we’re helping define what that future looks like by bringing Sponsored Products directly into AI-driven shopping journeys.”
How it works
The integration is built on Criteo’s existing Sponsored Products infrastructure—no new ad stack required. Here’s how the experience comes to life:
A shopper starts a conversation. A shopper asks the retailer’s AI-powered conversational search for help discovering or comparing products, anything from “help me plan taco night” to building a full grocery list.
Intent drives recommendation. Keywords and filters are extracted from the conversation and converted into tailored product recommendations based on the shopper’s request.
Sponsored Products appear natively. When eligible and relevant, Sponsored Products are integrated seamlessly within the assistant’s response alongside organic recommendations and in a way that enhances rather than disrupts the discovery experience.
Closed-loop measurement and insights. Retailers and brands access shared, closed-loop performance insights that connect aggregated conversational exposure to clicks, conversions, and revenue, all through existing reporting workflows.
Why this matters: Benefits for Retailers, Brands, and Shoppers
For retailers, AI shopping assistants are already generating high-intent traffic. Until now, much of that traffic has not been directly monetized through retail media. With Sponsored Products integrated into AI-powered conversational search, retailers can monetize relevant discovery moments within AI-assisted shopping journeys using the retail media infrastructure already in place. This makes activation easy, with no new demand to recruit and no additional integration complexity. The AI assistant becomes a revenue surface extending existing retail media income into a fast-growing new discovery channel. At the same time, retailers retain control over how sponsored recommendations are presented, ensuring monetization aligns with their shopper experience objectives.
For brands, it’s an opportunity to maintain visibility. An AI assistant typically surfaces three to five products in response to a query, which is far fewer than a traditional search results page. As discovery increasingly begins in AI experiences, brands that aren’t present on these surfaces risk losing consideration before shoppers ever reach the search results page. Sponsored Product placements in AI-powered conversational search help brands stay visible and create an emerging opportunity to reach shoppers early in their shopping journey, when intent is high and recommendations are informed by the shopper’s own words.
For shoppers, the experience is seamless. Sponsored recommendations appear only when they genuinely match what the shopper asked for. The same relevance models that power search advertising (keyword matching, semantic understanding, strict relevance thresholds) apply in the conversational context. The result is that sponsored products feel like helpful suggestions.
Where retail media and AI-assisted commerce go from here
The launch with Albertsons Cos. is the first step in a broader vision to extend retail media into AI-assisted commerce. We’re actively exploring additional new formats and are proud to be helping define what retail media looks like in this exciting new world.
To learn more about Criteo’s solutions for AI-driven shopping, talk to a Criteo expert.
FAQ
What’s an AI shopping assistant?
An AI shopping assistant is a conversational tool on a retailer’s site or app that helps shoppers discover, compare, and choose products by understanding what they want in everyday language and providing recommendations.
How do Sponsored Products work in an AI shopping assistant?
Sponsored Products work by turning a shopper’s request in the AI assistant into relevant product recommendations, then placing eligible sponsored items alongside organic results within the conversation so they feel helpful, native, and measurable through existing retail media reporting workflows.
What kind of shopper questions can trigger AI assistant ads?
Open-ended or exploratory questions like “how do I make pesto?”, or more specific queries like “compare Brand A versus Brand B” could trigger an ad. If there are eligible and relevant ads that match the intent identified in the query, then an AI assistant ad will be shown.
