The Raley's Companies and Grocery TV today announced a partnership to operate an in-store retail media network across 208 grocery stores in California, Nevada, and Arizona - one of the more geographically concentrated rollouts among regional chains in the current cycle of physical-store media expansion.

The announcement, made on May 20, 2026, covers six store banners: Raley's, Bel Air, Nob Hill, Bashas', Food City, and AJ's Fine Foods. According to The Raley's Companies, the network connects brands directly with shoppers at the point of purchase across a retail footprint that includes high-frequency grocery environments serving Latino and Native communities across the American West.

A regional chain with deep community roots

The Raley's Companies is a private, family-owned business headquartered in West Sacramento, California. According to The Raley's Companies, the organisation was founded in 1935 and has grown to more than 230 locations across four states and four Tribal Nations, operating under eight banners including Raley's O-N-E Market and Bashas' Dine Market alongside the six banners covered by today's in-store media rollout. The company employs more than 21,000 people.

That footprint matters for brands considering the network. The stores operate in markets where the shopper base is often distinct from the national chains that dominate retail media spending, and where brand loyalty patterns tend to run deep. According to The Raley's Companies, the network offers "scaled access to distinct audiences within established, high-frequency grocery environments" - a formulation that signals the audience composition argument the company intends to make to CPG advertisers and agencies.

The six banners in the rollout are not uniform. Raley's and its sister chains Bel Air and Nob Hill are California-focused formats. Bashas' and Food City operate primarily in Arizona and serve distinct demographics, with Food City specifically oriented toward Latino shoppers. AJ's Fine Foods sits at the premium end of the portfolio. Together, the banners produce a cross-section of shopper profiles that is difficult to replicate through any single national retail media network.

The Grocery TV platform and its current scale

Grocery TV is an in-store retail media technology company based in New York City. According to Grocery TV, its platform now reaches more than 6,700 stores across more than 120 retail partners following the Raley's addition - up from over 6,500 stores cited in the company's background materials. The company describes its reach as covering one in four Americans.

The platform's recent expansion history includes partnerships with Hy-Vee, Giant Eagle, Northeast Grocery, and ShopRite, according to Grocery TV. These are predominantly regional chains in the Midwest and Northeast - geographies that differ substantially from the Western markets where The Raley's Companies operates. The Raley's rollout represents a meaningful extension of Grocery TV's geographic reach into California, Nevada, and Arizona, where the company had less established presence.

One notable aspect of the announcement is the return of Bashas' to the Grocery TV network. Marlow Nickell, co-founder and CEO of Grocery TV, noted the partnership represented a chance "to welcome Bashas' back to the Grocery TV network," suggesting a prior relationship between the two organisations. Neither company disclosed when that earlier relationship began or why it was interrupted.

Speed of deployment as a selling point

One of the more specific claims in the announcement concerns the time required to deploy the network. According to Zac Wilson, Vice President of Digital Commerce at The Raley's Companies, "what could have taken years to build, we were able to stand up in a matter of weeks." Wilson described speed as a critical factor in evaluating the Grocery TV partnership alongside the company's ability to help build advertiser demand.

That framing reflects a genuine operational reality in in-store retail media. Installing and integrating a proprietary screen network - hardware, content management systems, ad serving, measurement - requires capital expenditure, vendor negotiation, construction coordination, and staff training that can stretch deployments over extended periods. Platform-based approaches like Grocery TV's reduce that timeline by providing the technology layer as a managed service, leaving the retailer to focus on deployment logistics rather than building the underlying infrastructure from scratch.

The Raley's announcement does not specify how many screens are installed per store, what screen formats are in use, where within stores the screens are positioned, or what content management system governs scheduling. Those details are commercially significant for brands evaluating impression volumes and placement quality, but they were not included in the public announcement.

Full-funnel strategy and in-store as the next layer

The announcement frames the in-store network as one element of a broader full-funnel retail media strategy rather than a standalone product. According to The Raley's Companies, the launch "advances another element of Raley's full-funnel retail media strategy focused on rising demand for integrated in-store and digital campaigns."

That positioning implies the company already operates digital retail media capabilities - search, display, or both - and is adding in-store as the physical-environment component. The full-funnel framing is consistent with how retail media networks broadly position in-store media: not as a replacement for digital formats, but as the layer that closes the gap between upper-funnel awareness and the moment a shopper picks a product from the shelf.

Wilson's statement elaborated: "Together, we're creating an in-store retail media experience that feels cohesive for both our brand partners and our shoppers." The emphasis on cohesion suggests the network is designed to align messaging across digital and physical touchpoints rather than operate as a separate channel with separate inventory and separate campaign management.

Regional grocers as an expanding category

The Raley's announcement arrives during a concentrated period of in-store retail media activity among regional grocery chains - a segment that has historically sat outside the largest national retail media budgets but is attracting increasing platform investment. In May 2026, Stater Bros. Markets partnered with In-Store Marketplace (ISM) to launch programmatic audio across 165 Southern California grocery locations, with digital screens planned for a later phase. That deal, also in California, used a different technical approach - routing inventory through Vibenomics and structuring the rollout in phases - but reflects the same category dynamic.

Earlier, Grocery TV announced a partnership with ABCS Insights in late April 2026 to bring independent, third-party sales lift measurement to its in-store network, using a panel of 41 million US households combining receipt data and card transaction data. That measurement infrastructure is relevant context for the Raley's announcement: brands considering the network will want to understand what measurement capabilities apply to campaigns running across the 208 Raley's banner stores.

The movement toward regional grocery chains reflects a structural limitation of national retail media networks. Amazon, Walmart, and Kroger operate at a scale that makes their networks appealing to the largest CPG advertisers, but regional chains command loyalty from shoppers who may not regularly use the retailers that host the dominant national networks. A brand trying to reach shoppers in Arizona's Latino grocery market, for instance, cannot effectively replicate that exposure through a national network whose footprint does not include Food City.

The broader in-store retail media sector has been building measurement standards infrastructure over the past two years, with the IAB and IAB Europe both publishing incremental measurement guidelines and certification programmes aimed at giving advertisers more confidence in physical-environment ad spend. That standardisation work runs parallel to the network expansion activity, and the two trends are connected: as more retailers add in-store screens, the absence of standardised measurement becomes a more acute commercial problem.

What the Grocery TV model offers retailers

Grocery TV operates as a managed service platform rather than a licensed technology product. According to the company, retailers partner with Grocery TV to "modernise their stores and drive incremental revenue while creating a more engaging shopping experience" - language that positions the platform as handling the operational complexity that would otherwise fall on the retailer's internal team.

For a privately held regional chain like The Raley's Companies, that model has a practical logic. Building proprietary in-store media infrastructure requires dedicated engineering, ad operations, and sales capacity that competes for resources with the core retail business. A platform approach transfers those requirements to a specialist operator while the retailer contributes store access and audience data.

The model also addresses the advertiser demand problem directly. A new in-store network at a regional chain has limited appeal to national brands if it requires a separate direct sales relationship. Grocery TV's existing relationships with brands and agencies across its 120-plus retail partners mean that The Raley's Companies enters the market with access to advertisers who are already transacting on the platform, rather than beginning a standalone sales effort from zero.

Nickell's statement acknowledged this dynamic: "That trust, combined with strong store traffic, creates a powerful in-store environment for brands." The framing pairs the retailer's community credibility with Grocery TV's platform reach as complementary assets rather than presenting either in isolation.

Market context for the marketing community

In-store retail media has moved from a speculative category to an active investment area for CPG brands and agencies managing Western US market budgets. The Raley's network covers 208 stores across three states, representing a meaningful footprint for brands that define their target markets along Pacific Coast or Southwest regional lines.

For media buyers, the announcement adds inventory to a category that has been growing in technical maturity. Grocery TV's addition of third-party sales lift measurement via ABCS Insights earlier in 2026 means that campaigns running on the platform can, at least in principle, be evaluated against incremental purchase data rather than impressions alone. Whether that measurement capability extends to campaigns on the newly added Raley's inventory from day one was not addressed in today's announcement.

The partnership is also notable from a retail media network concentration perspective. As Grocery TV adds regional partners, it accumulates a combined audience and a combined data asset that becomes more interesting to national advertisers. A single platform buy across 6,700 stores and 120 retail partners is a different product from 120 separate regional negotiations. That aggregation argument is central to Grocery TV's positioning and becomes stronger with each new partner added to the network.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Raley's Companies, a private family-owned grocery retailer headquartered in West Sacramento, California, in partnership with Grocery TV, an in-store retail media platform company based in New York City.

What: The launch of an in-store retail media network across 208 stores spanning six banners - Raley's, Bel Air, Nob Hill, Bashas', Food City, and AJ's Fine Foods - connecting brands with shoppers at the point of purchase through digital screens managed via Grocery TV's platform.

When: Announced on May 20, 2026.

Where: Stores located across California, Nevada, and Arizona, serving shoppers across the American West including communities with Latino and Native American heritage. Grocery TV is based in New York City; The Raley's Companies in West Sacramento, California.

Why: The Raley's Companies sought to extend its existing retail media capabilities into the physical store environment to meet advertiser demand for integrated in-store and digital campaigns. Grocery TV gains a new regional partner that extends its geographic footprint into Western US markets and brings its total network to more than 6,700 stores across 120 retail partners.

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