Media: Spotlight - Asda leads charge as retail media comes of age.

The initiative is the result of advertisers' demands, not agencies'.

There's nothing particularly new about the retail channel - in theory, at least. In practice, it has been a fragmentary notion and the mainstream ad industry has tended to resist the idea that it adds up to a serious media opportunity.

Time was, of course, when retail platforms weren't really filed under the media heading. But slowly and surely, the supermarket retailers have started to realise the extra value that they can extract from the steady (if not exactly captive) market their customers represent.

In the past decade or so, they've built loyalty-card databases and launched customer magazines, while also noting the success of companies such as JCDecaux, Clear Channel and Maiden in developing inventory on the edges of the retail space - shopping malls and town-centre street furniture.

So much so that the supermarket chains have grabbed a bit of that action themselves, while also turning their in-store background music into in-store radio stations.

Taken together, these platforms now add up to a powerful opportunity, but it's one that has largely eluded the mainstream advertising community.

That, though, is about to change, largely because of two related factors.