Retail media is booming—and Costco just made a strategic move to keep pace. The membership retail giant has selected GrowthLoop to help accelerate its retail media business, tapping the company’s Compound Marketing Engine to improve audience creation, personalization, and campaign performance.

For Costco, the deal is about speed and scale. GrowthLoop’s platform lets marketers build audiences directly from the data cloud, iterate campaigns faster, and maintain the privacy and governance standards that matter to a member-driven business. In practice, that means advertisers on Costco’s retail media network can deliver more relevant messages while Costco sharpens the value it delivers to its 130M+ members.

Turning Data Into Action

Retail media is now a multibillion-dollar category, with players like Walmart, Kroger, and Amazon setting a fast pace. Costco’s adoption of GrowthLoop signals it’s serious about competing. The Compound Marketing Engine essentially gives Costco a centralized hub for retail media operations, letting its team streamline workflows and give advertisers clearer access to audience targeting and measurement.

GrowthLoop positions itself as a bridge between the data cloud and activation layers—helping marketers collapse marketing cycles from months to days. For Costco, that could mean moving from static, batch-based campaigns to real-time personalization at scale.

Chris O’Neill, GrowthLoop CEO, called the partnership a milestone:

“Costco’s commitment to its members is second to none, and we’re grateful to be part of their continued innovation in retail media and marketing.”

The timing is key. Retail media is forecasted to surpass $150 billion in U.S. ad spend by 2026, outpacing TV and traditional digital. For Costco, which has historically relied on its membership model more than ad revenue, this partnership shows intent to monetize its massive member base while keeping customer trust intact.

Unlike open-web advertising, retail media offers highly contextual, first-party data environments—something marketers crave as cookies fade away. Costco’s move to embed GrowthLoop’s engine puts it in the same conversation as other retail media heavyweights, though its value proposition is unique: affluent, loyal members who already trust the brand.

For advertisers, this could mean more precise campaigns running across Costco’s retail media channels with faster iteration cycles and richer personalization. For Costco, it’s an infrastructure play that turns its retail media ambitions into a scalable growth engine.

Whether Costco can catch up to Walmart Connect or Amazon Ads is still a question, but with GrowthLoop under the hood, it’s clearly positioning retail media as a strategic growth driver, not a side hustle.

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