Pollen, the AI-powered retail media platform launched by Sainsbury’s loyalty business Nectar360, has delivered “strong early results” from campaigns across leading brands.
Pollen looks to combine audience insight, media planning, campaign activation, in-flight optimisation and measurement into a single platform, with brands able to run connected campaigns across in store, online and offsite channels.
Since its launch in late 2025, initial data shows that brands are seeing over 2.5 times higher incremental sales from omnichannel campaigns. The strongest results are seen when brands connect multiple touchpoints across the customer journey.
From those incremental sales, up to 25% are driven by mid and upper-funnel activity.
Brands are also seeing up to 10 times higher conversion rates from targeted activity, powered by first-party data.
Speaking with The Grocer, Nectar360 managing director Amir Rasekh said these results show that Pollen “absolutely delivers” on its promise to make retail media “simpler, faster and more measurable”.
“Brands have really engaged with retail media, they see the value and the benefit,” he explained. “But actually, expectations are high and when I speak to the hundreds of clients we work with, their expectations are higher than traditional marketing and media channels.
“We see that as a really interesting challenge and the way we planned to solve for that was to launch Pollen. We’re in the process of onboarding our client base and feedback has been excellent throughout.”
Pollen uses AI to improve performance based on what is driving sales and incrementality.
This includes AI-powered tools such as advanced multi-touch attribution, which looks to give a clearer view of how each channel contributes to results, and a creative checker, which Nectar360 said can “reduce compliance checks from weeks to 90 seconds”.
Brands including Unilever and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners have reported “faster activation, improved measurement and more effective cross-partner collaboration using Pollen”, the business said.
Unilever UK & Ireland head of retail media Charlotte Murphy said that as retail media “scaled quickly”, the fmcg giant had “not kept pace” with the way it planned and executed campaigns.
“Pollen brings everything together in one place, giving us the speed, simplicity and control we have been missing,” she explained. “It is a meaningful step forward for how we plan, activate and notably measure retail media with the measurement insights directly informing our future plans.”
But it was not just larger brands benefiting from the platform, Rasekh said. “Support of smaller to medium-sized brands has been hotwired into our DNA since day one of setting up this organisation.
“In both Sainsbury’s and Argos, you have significant-sized brands, but you also have smaller and niche brands that really do make a difference for customers. We wanted to set up a business that could serve the entirety.”
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