👋 Hello media misfits

Well, well, well… Look who finally got serious about off-site.

While the rest of retail has been busy slapping banner ads on their own websites like it’s 2012, John Lewis just swiped left on the siloed site-only strategy and swanned into omnichannel stardom—complete with Epsilon on its arm and a purse full of first-party data.

Let’s unpack the JLP glow-up, shall we?

John Lewis has finally clocked what Amazon figured out back when Bezos still had hair: you don’t need customers on your site to monetise them.

With only 10–20% of shoppers actually bothering to visit retailer websites, it's off-site where the action (and the money) really is. And guess what? JLP wants in.

According to Experian, off-site retail media spend will grow three times faster than on-site this year. That’s 42.1% versus a sluggish 15.1%. And by 2027, one in every four retail media dollars will be off-site. JLP isn’t late to the party—it’s fashionably late, and wearing couture.

This isn’t your average plug-and-play DSP deal.

JLP’s hook-up with Epsilon gives them access to CORE AI—a system that literally sizes up 100% of potential shoppers before deciding whether to bid. Not 80%. Not 95%. Every. Single. One.

And forget cookies. With CORE ID, JLP can recognise real people across channels—legally, of course—while feeding all that juicy loyalty data into the ad machine. It’s like giving your CRM a gym membership, personal stylist, and a PhD.

You know what's not sexy? Points-based loyalty cards.

You know what is? £100 million in personalised Waitrose discounts that are “pointless” by design but drive maximum emotional clinginess. Think Boots card but with Champagne.

Between 4.6M MyWaitrose and 3.7M MyJohnLewis members, JLP has data on everything from who buys oat milk to who impulse-bought a velvet ottoman after watching Bake Off. MyJohnLewis members shop 2.5x more often than non-members. Now imagine retargeting that on CTV during a mid-season Love Island ad break. Iconic.

CTV + Retail Media = chef’s kiss.

By integrating retail data with streaming ad placements, JLP can now actually measure sales off the back of that Waitrose Christmas ham pre-roll.

ROAS boost? Try 67%.
Sales lift? Double.
Attribution nerds, your spreadsheets just got exciting.

Tesco’s Clubcard Media? Great for BOGOFs and beans.
Amazon? Fantastic if your brand fits between HDMI cables and discounted sex toys.

But JLP offers that rare mix: grocery and considered purchases. Pasta and Persian rugs. Hummus and Herman Miller. No other UK retailer is doing that with a unified media network. That’s a serious USP, darling.

Sure, off-site has lower margins than on-site (40% vs 90%, roughly). But the scale is real.
On-site is limited by traffic. Off-site? It’s programmatic—infinite scale, no new customers needed. Just sprinkle in a bit of machine learning, and boom: ad revenue with your morning croissant.

And they’re smart about it. Starting with a managed service model to keep control, before opening the gates to self-serve chaos. Agencies: get in early before the CPMs inflate faster than a Black Friday queue.

JLP isn’t just serving ads and praying—they’re running closed-loop attribution from media impression to actual till ring.

Which means fewer PowerPoint fairy tales and more “here’s your ROI” moments. 29% average sales lift using first-party data versus the 8–10% we all pretend is “strong performance” in vanilla programmatic? Yes please.

If you're a brand or agency not exploring this, it’s giving… negligence.

👋 Until next time,
David

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