Footprints AI software platform layer will be made available across multiple markets within the SPAR retail network which sees 13,500+ stores operating in 50 markets. This platform will offer predictive omnichannel targeting, instore behavioural measurement, and closed-loop substantiation of incremental ROAS.

SPAR International has formed a strategic partnership with Footprints AI to develop a robust media platform to support independently operated food retail. The platform will be available to all SPAR country organisations, enabling licensees to plan, buy, optimise, and measure retail media campaigns from a single platform, with the same simplicity, precision, and sales tracking as digital advertising.

Retail media has become one of the fastest-growing advertising channels because it connects media spend to real shopping behaviour. But its infrastructure has not kept pace with demand: hundreds of isolated networks with separate buying processes, incompatible reporting, and no comparable measurement. Advertisers seeking multi-market scale pay for that fragmentation in overhead, friction, and unprovable return on investment.

SPAR is well structured for the Footprints AI platform layer being introduced through this partnership. The SPAR voluntary retail group comprises independently owned and operated wholesalers and retailers – local entrepreneurs who know their customers – connected internationally. That structure is exactly what this international platform requires: locally built retail media, bought and measured globally.

The partnership provides solutions through a single platform layer, not another network, and, in addition to giving independent retailers a ready-made solution, respects all privacy and data legislation, ensuring no impingement on shoppers’ privacy. The platform offers retailers new revenue streams by connecting suppliers with consumers through store-level advertising. The platform also enables local, regional, national, or international campaign execution, with retailers benefiting from standardised reach measurements for each campaign.

Footprints AI’s software sits on top of SPAR country organisations’ existing physical and digital retail infrastructure (stores, screens, instore radio, e-commerce, mobile apps, and POS data) and connects it into one advertiser-facing marketplace, while ensuring each SPAR country organisation keeps full control of its own data, assets, and commercial model.

The platform is based on proven infrastructure. Footprints AI operates the largest and fastest-growing federated retail media ecosystem in Central and Eastern Europe, where campaigns for global brands have delivered measured incremental sales uplift through the same predictive targeting and closed-loop measurement now being deployed to multiple markets within the SPAR network. The platform will expand as additional SPAR country organisations connect their local audiences, channels, and measurement capabilities.

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