Quick answer: Four competing UK retailers, Tesco, B&Q, John Lewis, and Waitrose, have joined a shared retail media model called the Dunnhumby Network Alliance. Built on Kevel's infrastructure and led by dunnhumby Chief Growth Officer Andrew Connell, the alliance lets retailers pool audiences and ad inventory instead of each building an isolated network, and puts retailers, rather than big tech platforms, at the center of where brand and shopper budgets get spent.
Retail media has a fragmentation problem, and most of the conversation about it focuses on the brand side: too many logins, too many measurement standards, too many networks competing for the same budget. On a recent episode of Unlocking Retail Media, Kevel CEO James Avery talked with Andrew Connell, Chief Growth Officer at dunnhumby, about a different kind of answer, one built from the retailer's side of the table.
dunnhumby, the data science business owned by Tesco, recently launched the Dunnhumby Network Alliance, a shared retail media model built on Kevel's technology. Four major UK retailers, Tesco, B&Q, John Lewis, and Waitrose, are already part of the early pilot. Below are the questions brands, retailers, and platforms are asking about what this actually means.
What Is the Dunnhumby Network Alliance?
Quick answer: A shared retail media platform that lets competing UK retailers pool audiences, run campaigns, and apply dunnhumby's measurement across all of them, instead of each building a separate network.
dunnhumby is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tesco and already handles the retailer's data science, category management, and pricing work. Connell leads dunnhumby's global media practice, including the Network Alliance business it is building with Kevel. The UK pilot launched shortly before Cannes with three partners alongside Tesco: Kingfisher's B&Q and Screwfix brands, and the John Lewis Partnership's John Lewis and Waitrose banners.
"We're really trying to give retailers an alternative to being kind of competed out a little bit by the big tech players." - Andrew Connell
Connell describes the approach as pilot, learn, adapt: a deliberate choice to prove the model in one market before expanding it further.
Why Are Competing Retailers Sharing One Platform Instead of Building Separate Networks?
Quick answer: Because the alternative is watching a large tech platform aggregate retail media on its own terms. Amazon's recent moves with Macy's and Asda show what that looks like.
Avery compared the moment to the early days of programmatic advertising, when big tech platforms accelerated in part because publishers never found a way to work together. Connell sees the same fork in the road for retail media: either retailers build a shared, retailer-owned alternative, or a large platform builds it for them. He points to UK broadcasters ITV, Sky, and Channel 4 exploring closer collaboration as a sign that even long-time competitors are recognizing the same shift.
What Problem Is This Actually Solving for Brands?
Quick answer: Retailers have mostly captured the shopper budget available to them. The harder opportunity is the brand and performance dollars still going to Meta, Google, and television.
Both Avery and Connell pointed to a shift already underway inside large CPG companies, which are increasingly treating brand and shopper budgets as one pool rather than two separate ones. Connell argues those dollars will follow whichever retail media model can prove it understands a customer's full journey, not just the transaction that happens in one store.
What New Formats and Use Cases Could This Open Up?
Quick answer: Cross-category journeys that no single retailer could support alone: home renovation, EV charging stops, even a life event like moving house.
Connell described a renovation journey that might span B&Q or Screwfix for materials, John Lewis for furniture, and Tesco for groceries, all the same household, currently invisible to each retailer on its own. He also described early conversations with property portals about combining home-buying signals with retail audiences, and with a fuel retailer thinking through what to do with a captive customer sitting at an EV charger for twenty to thirty minutes.
"I'd really like it if somebody sent me a really great set of offers around the things you know you are likely to want or need." - Andrew Connell, on the kind of experience a connected alliance could enable
What About Measurement Across Multiple Retailers?
Quick answer: Still one of the hardest open problems. If a campaign draws on Tesco's data but the purchase happens at Waitrose, that connection is currently invisible.
Connell acknowledged this directly when Avery raised it as one of the toughest cases the alliance needs to solve. Getting to deterministic, cross-retailer attribution will mean unpicking behavioral assumptions the industry has relied on for years, work Connell says is underway rather than solved.
Where Is the Alliance Headed Next?
Quick answer: Beyond the UK, and beyond grocery. dunnhumby is already in early conversations across health and beauty, wine and spirits, banking, and travel, with interest from Europe, Australasia, and the Middle East.
Connell sees mid-size US grocers, ones that struggle to get the same attention from CPGs as Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, or Albertsons, as a natural next market. He is also exploring how the model could extend across borders entirely, letting a brand run one campaign across several countries and retailers instead of rebuilding it market by market.
Key Takeaways at a Glance
1. What is the Dunnhumby Network Alliance?
A shared retail media platform, built on Kevel, that lets Tesco, B&Q, John Lewis, and Waitrose pool audiences and inventory.
2. Why did dunnhumby build this instead of scaling one retailer's network?
To give retailers a retailer-owned alternative to a big tech platform aggregating retail media on its own terms.
3. What budgets is the alliance trying to win?
Brand and performance dollars still going to Meta, Google, and television, not just the shopper budget retailers already capture.
4. What new use cases could this enable?
Cross-category journeys like home renovation and EV charging, plus new verticals like health and beauty and travel.
5. Is cross-retailer measurement solved yet?
No. Attributing a purchase at one retailer to a campaign run on another retailer's data is still an open problem.
Conclusion: Retail Media's Next Test Is Cooperation, Not Just Scale
The Dunnhumby Network Alliance is still early. Four retailers, one market, and a long list of harder problems still to solve, from cross-retailer measurement to deciding which categories and countries come next. But the model itself matters regardless of how quickly it scales. It is a bet that retailers can build the aggregation layer their industry needs before a large platform builds it for them, and that doing it together, on infrastructure they control, is worth more than doing it alone.
That is the same principle behind why Kevel exists: giving retailers and commerce media networks ownership of their ad stack and their data, instead of renting it back from a platform that was never built for them.
Listen to the Full Conversation on Unlocking Retail Media
For more insights like these, tune in to the full episode of Unlocking Retail Media, the podcast where Kevel CEO James Avery sits down with industry leaders and innovators shaping the future of retail and commerce media.
Listen to the full conversation with Andrew Connell on Unlocking Retail Media.
